"Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far."

Jean Cocteau Literature See all quotes by Jean Cocteau →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Jean Cocteau

See all

“Art is science made clear.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

Resonant Thoughts

"He’s no politician. He’s a businessman. He knows how to talk. He can give an hour speech without notes . . . He’s blunt."

— Ivana Trump

Business1949–2022

#knowledge

"Frankenstein, he makes a friend, he wants a wife... That’s the one that I think cemented the creature as an icon, because all of the sudden you got to know the creature as a full-fledged person, and y…"

— Michael Dougherty

Literature

#knowledge

"As the Knowledge of Nature tends to enlarge the human Mind, and give us more noble, more grand, and exalted Ideas of the AUTHOR of Nature, and if well pursu'd, seldom fails producing something useful …"

— Ebenezer Kinnersley

Science1711–1778

#knowledge

"In conclusion, we can say that the Indonesian literati had access to all branches of Sanskrit learning and they put these disciplines to the best of use in the emergence of their own creative literatu…"

— Lokesh Chandra

Literature1927

#knowledge