Quote by Jean Cocteau

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Summary

This quote suggests that the essence of being a poet lies in the act of listening rather than inventing. It implies that poets do not create ideas or concepts from scratch but rather perceive and absorb the world around them. By attentively listening to the wonders and sorrows of life, poets are able to capture and convey the subtle truths and emotions that already exist in the universe, putting pen to paper to express what is already present and waiting to be heard.

Topics

By Jean Cocteau

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthda

I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthday. And in the year that followed, I learned that there are many psychological phases of being 'let go.'

Mika Brzezinski

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

John Stuart Mill

It's not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degr

It's not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree. It's what you do with your life that counts.

Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I

Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, se

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does no

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

When I was very, very young, seven years old, I heard there

When I was very, very young, seven years old, I heard there was school where you could go to learn to draw. That was my absolute driven passion, to become an artist or a painter. So the romantic realist in me, I studied to be a graphic design artist and an art teacher.

David Coverdale

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck the photographer could n

Sometimes they are a matter of luck the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every de

Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.

Richard Dawkins

Science Evolutionary Biology

What a fool does in the end, the wise do in the beginning.

What a fool does in the end, the wise do in the beginning.

Foolishness Fools

Riches come forth from one who owns little, while another of

Riches come forth from one who owns little, while another of material wealth turns penniless.

Wealth Materialism