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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 Misattributed

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More quotes by 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.

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

Le Mystère Laïc (1928)

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

All Jean Cocteau quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jean Cocteau (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.