Jean Cocteau Quotes

• A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

  Jean Cocteau

  Topics in Movies

• Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

  Jean Cocteau

  Topics in Death

• The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.

  Jean Cocteau

• The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

  Jean Cocteau

• When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

  Jean Cocteau

• Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.

  Jean Cocteau

• We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

  Jean Cocteau

• True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

  Jean Cocteau

• There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.

  Jean Cocteau

• There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.

  Jean Cocteau

• The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

  Jean Cocteau

• The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

  Jean Cocteau

• The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.

  Jean Cocteau

• The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

  Jean Cocteau

• The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.

  Jean Cocteau

• The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.

  Jean Cocteau

• The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

  Jean Cocteau

• The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

  Jean Cocteau

• Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.

  Jean Cocteau

• Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.

  Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau (70)

Birth:	5th July, 1889
Death:	11th October, 1963
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Film Director, Novelist, Painter, Playwright, Poet, Screenwriter

About

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, France. He was a French painter, playwright, poet, novelist, screenwriter and film director. He directed and wrote several films include: The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, The Eagle with Two Heads, The Storm Within, Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus. He wrote several novels include: Le Potomak, Le Grand Écart, Le Livre blanc, Les Enfants Terribles, and La Fin du Potomak. He wrote several plays include: Orphée and La Machine Infernale. Some of his most important works include the poem L’Ange Heurtebise. At age 19 he published his first volume of poems, La Lampe d’Aladin(Aladdin's Lamp).

Related Authors

• John Ford
• Andy Wachowski
• Mark Davis
• Frank Miller
• Brian De Palma
• Banksy
• Andrea Arnold
• Danica McKellar
• Michael Kenneth Mann
• Walter Lang

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th November

Births

• 1870 - Maurice Denis
• 1915 - Augusto Pinochet
• 1905 - Patrick Arthur Devlin
• 1913 - Lewis Thomas
• 1957 - Robert L. Ehrlich

Deaths

• 1970 - Yukio Mishima
• 1974 - U Thant
• 1998 - Nelson Goodman
• 2002 - Karel Reisz
• 1973 - Laurence Harvey