328 Quotes by Jean Cocteau

See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan’s deflation is another’s inflation.

It is, it seems, a social crime to desire solitude.

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.

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.

Delicious was not a term applicable to anything below the crust of that volcano, whose heady vapors numbed his ravished senses.

A half empty bottle of wine is also half full, but half a lie will never be half true.

It is in this way that a war is disastrous. If it does not kill, it transmits to some an energy alien to their own resources; to others it permits what the law forbids and accustoms them to short cuts. It artificially glorifies ingenuity, pity, daring. A whole younger generation believes itself to be sublime and collapses when it has to draw on itself for patriotism and fate.

Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself.

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