quotes from classic

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

more quotes from 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.

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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.

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

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

Life is a horizontal fall.

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

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

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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.

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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

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Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.

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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.

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.

more quotes from 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.

more quotes from Jean Cocteau

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

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You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart.

more quotes from John Ford

It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we're always in other places, lost, like sheep.

more quotes from Janet Frame

Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.

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Westerners inherit A design for living Deeper into matter— Not without due patter Of a great misgiving.

more quotes from Robert Frost

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

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