Jean Cocteau Quotes

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

I didn't realize that pretending to be this 'Hills Heidi,' this spoiled rich girl who I wasn't, would almost destroy me.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Once you compromise yourself in one way, you compromise yourself in another way. And you've just opened the door to compromise, mediocrity, settling.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.

You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves

Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.

That's the illusion - the idea that you can be all right on the inside and not act it out - and it has affected us in many ways. That's a part of the idea that professing is enough.

I do not often attack the Labour Party, they do it so well themselves.

Once, during the drinking phase, Wendy had accused him of desiring his own destruction but not possessing the necessary moral fiber to support a full-blown deathwish. So he manufactured ways in which other people could do it, lopping a piece at a time off himself and their family.

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.

You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.

We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.

But in my life, in my personality, there is an essence of falseness and insincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud hangs always over me and dampens and injures some things in me that I value.

He was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn't realize that once a noose is tied it will fit one neck as easily as another.

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

Anyone or anything that asks you to be untrue to yourself has already acted against you.

I’ve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I’m the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it.I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I’ve done that. All by myself. All to myself.

I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands.

The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that no one is cheated in this world, unless it's by himself.

self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation).

Part of our society kills what it loves, despises what it's created. It really hates success.