Quotes from Jean Cocteau

If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

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

Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.

The matters I relateAre true lies.

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.

Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for.

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.

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 bizzare which seems inherent in them.

The extreme limit of wisdom--that is what the public calls madness.

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, they finish by loading honors on your head.

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.

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

Living is a horizontal fall.

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

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.

Be yourself. The world worships the original.

There's no such thing as love; only proof of love.

Art is science made clear.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.