Jean Cocteau Quotes

• 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

• Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

  Jean Cocteau

• Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.

  Jean Cocteau

• Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.

  Jean Cocteau

• If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

  Jean Cocteau

• If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

  Jean Cocteau

• In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

  Jean Cocteau

• It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

  Jean Cocteau

• Life is a horizontal fall.

  Jean Cocteau

• Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.

  Jean Cocteau

• One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

  Jean Cocteau

• I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

  Jean Cocteau

• Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

  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).

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Today's Anniversary - 24th November

Births

• 1925 - William F. Buckley, Jr.
• 1934 - Alfred Schnittke
• 1934 - Martin Charnin
• 1942 - Marlin Fitzwater
• 1632 - Baruch Spinoza

Deaths

• 1990 - Fred Shero
• 2004 - Warren Spahn
• 1957 - Diego Rivera
• 1807 - Joseph Brant
• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald