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

Jean Cocteau Literature See all quotes by Jean Cocteau →

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“Art is science made clear.”

“Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.”

“Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.”

“Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.”

“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”

“What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.”

Resonant Thoughts

"She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together …"

— William Faulkner

Literature1923–1962

#family

"Finally, there is one more kind of India-watcher or India-fan in the West, with a typical and remarkable attitude to the Ayodhya affair: the"seekers". Some people staying in India for spiritual things…"

— Koenraad Elst

Indology1959

#justice

"If we really came to a position in which we could no longer produce the grain which we must necessarily consume, then in what state would we be if in wartime we had no Russian grain imports and perhap…"

— Otto von Bismarck

Politics

#art

"Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity…"

— Walter Gropius

Education1883–1969

#art