Top 200 Jean Cocteau Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.”

— Jean Cocteau

52. “It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.”

— Jean Cocteau

53. “What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.”

— Jean Cocteau

54. “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

55. “I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.”

— Jean Cocteau

56. “The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”

— Jean Cocteau

57. “Childhood knows what it wants – to leave childhood behind.”

— Jean Cocteau

58. “May the devil himself splatter you with dung.”

— Jean Cocteau

59. “Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.”

— Jean Cocteau

60. “My only politics have been friendship.”

— Jean Cocteau

61. “You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.”

— Jean Cocteau

62. “The artist must know how far to go too far.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

64. “Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.”

— Jean Cocteau

65. “Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.”

— Jean Cocteau

66. “Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.”

— Jean Cocteau

67. “He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.”

— Jean Cocteau

68. “Success had put me on the wrong track and I did not know that there is a kind of success worse than failure, and a kind of failure worth all the success in the world. Neither did I know that the distant friendship of Rainer Maria Rilke would one day console me for having seen his lamp burn without knowing that it was signalling me to go and singe my wings against its flame.”

— Jean Cocteau

69. “Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.”

— Jean Cocteau

70. “An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”

— Jean Cocteau

71. “Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.”

— Jean Cocteau

72. “Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.”

— Jean Cocteau

73. “Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

75. “Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”

— Jean Cocteau

76. “See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan’s deflation is another’s inflation.”

— Jean Cocteau

77. “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

78. “Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.”

— Jean Cocteau

79. “The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.”

— Jean Cocteau

80. “Without resistance you can do nothing.”

— Jean Cocteau

81. “The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.”

— Jean Cocteau

82. “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

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

— Jean Cocteau

84. “A man’s truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.”

— Jean Cocteau

85. “Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.”

— Jean Cocteau

86. “Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.”

— Jean Cocteau

87. “It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.”

— Jean Cocteau

88. “Listen very carefully to the first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work that the reviewers don’t like; it may be the only thing in your work that is original and worthwhile.”

— Jean Cocteau

89. “Art is science in the flesh.”

— Jean Cocteau

90. “Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.”

— Jean Cocteau

91. “The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.”

— Jean Cocteau

92. “Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.”

— Jean Cocteau

93. “The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.”

— Jean Cocteau

94. “Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

96. “Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

98. “I’m not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

100. “Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”

— Jean Cocteau