“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
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Jean Cocteau 123
French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager … 1889–1963Related quotes
“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature" http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TwaSpee.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=52&division=div1, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194 http://books.google.com/books?id=7etXZ5Q17ngC&pg=PA194
Variant: A classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
All the Trouble in the World (1994)
“Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun.”
Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Context: Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can.
Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Two
Source: Sincerity and Authenticity (1972), p. 64