Jean Cocteau Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Jean Cocteau:

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

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 truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

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

You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

Jean Cocteau

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?

Jean Cocteau

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

Jean Cocteau

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

Jean Cocteau

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Jean Cocteau

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Jean Cocteau

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

Jean Cocteau

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

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

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

Jean Cocteau

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.

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

Jean Cocteau

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

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

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

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

Jean Cocteau

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

Jean Cocteau

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.

Jean Cocteau

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

Jean Cocteau

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

Jean Cocteau

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

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

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

Jean Cocteau

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

Jean Cocteau

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

Jean Cocteau

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.

Jean Cocteau