Jean Cocteau quotes are thought-provoking, memorable and inspiring. From views on society and politics to thoughts on love and life, Jean Cocteau has a lot to say. In this list we present the 46 best Jean Cocteau quotes, in no particular order. Let yourself get inspired!
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Jean Cocteau quotes
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
— Jean Cocteau
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
— Jean Cocteau
Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
— Jean Cocteau
A child’s reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: “Paul’s dying; Paul’s going to die”‘ but he did not believe it. Paul’s death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.
— Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors
The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.
— Jean Cocteau
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
When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
— 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
Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.
— Jean Cocteau
Art is science made clear.
— Jean Cocteau
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
— Jean Cocteau
An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
— Jean Cocteau
Paris, however―because of her purely fortuitous beauty, because of the old things which have become a part of her, because of her entanglement of buildings and tenements―Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.
— Jean Cocteau, The Paris We Love
I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones.
— Jean Cocteau, The White Paper
plantitIt will sproutBut forget about the rustic festivitiesFor the explosive word falls harmlessly eternal throughthe compact generations
— Jean Cocteau, Le Cap De Bonne Esperance Suivi De Discours du Grand Sommeil
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
— Jean Cocteau
Be yourself. The world worships the original.
— Jean Cocteau
At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
— Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors
To be moved confuses the soul. One cannot convey these kinds of memories any more than the events of a dream……if I have complained too long, it is because my memory, no longer having any fixed abode, has to carry its luggage with it.
— Jean Cocteau, The Difficulty of Being
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.
— Jean Cocteau
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
— Jean Cocteau
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
— Jean Cocteau
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
— Jean Cocteau
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
— Jean Cocteau
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion on the other hand produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
— Jean Cocteau
Certainly I believe in luck. How else do you explain the success of those you don’t like?
— Jean Cocteau
One sits down first one thinks afterwards.
— Jean Cocteau
The joy of the young is to disobey – but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
— 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
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
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
— Jean Cocteau
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
— Jean Cocteau
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
— Jean Cocteau
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
— Jean Cocteau
A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
— Jean Cocteau
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.
— Jean Cocteau
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
— 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
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
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
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
— Jean Cocteau
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
— Jean Cocteau
Life is a horizontal fall.
— Jean Cocteau
The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.
— Jean Cocteau
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
— Jean Cocteau
Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
— 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
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