Top 200 Jean Cocteau Quotes (2023 Update)
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51. “I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

57. “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

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

— Jean Cocteau

59. “Without resistance you can do nothing.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

62. “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

63. “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

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

68. “Art is science in the flesh.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

75. “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

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

78. “Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.”

— Jean Cocteau

79. “One must not mistake majority for truth.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

81. “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

82. “The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.”

— Jean Cocteau

83. “I am burning myself up and will always do so.”

— Jean Cocteau

84. “In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God’s masterpiece to be a mistake.”

— Jean Cocteau

85. “The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

87. “I only fear the death of others. For me, true death is that of the people I love.”

— Jean Cocteau

88. “Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.”

— Jean Cocteau

89. “Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

91. “The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”

— Jean Cocteau

92. “Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

94. “Find first, seek later.”

— Jean Cocteau

95. “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

96. “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

97. “Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!”

— Jean Cocteau

98. “Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.”

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau

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

— Jean Cocteau