Jean Cocteau Quotes

113 Sourced Quotes

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.

Jean Cocteau
The Louvre is like the morgue; one goes there to identify one's friends.

Jean Cocteau
Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

Jean Cocteau
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Jean Cocteau
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

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
A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.

Jean Cocteau
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

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

Jean Cocteau
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.

Jean Cocteau
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Jean Cocteau
And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.

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

Jean Cocteau
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
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.

Jean Cocteau
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo.

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

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