The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
Jean CocteauRead
Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
Interpretation
Wealth and poverty are states of mind that influence our perception of value and success.
In this quote, Jean Cocteau suggests that both wealth and poverty are more about one's attitude and mindset than mere financial status. A person who is wealthy by mindset, regardless of their material possessions, carries a sense of self-worth that shines through, while someone who has gained riches without the corresponding mindset may find it difficult to genuinely embody the values associated with wealth.
In practice
During a motivational speech about mindset and success, you can use this quote to illustrate the importance of one's attitude towards wealth.
The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too _x000D_ I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafΓ© in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Long before the awakening of thought on earth, manifestations of cosmic energy must have been produced which have no parallel today.
To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone 'oppressed' to beat them: every revolutionist is presumed to understand that, and also every woman, which either does or does not make 51 percent of the population of the United States a potentially revolutionary class.
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.