Mason Cooley Quotes.
Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
The body has a mind of its own.
Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
A sure cure for boredom: fast until you are ravenous.
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.
Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.
When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.
Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
Malice is always authentic and sincere.
Listening to people keeps them entertained.
Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.
In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.
Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.
Passion cooks. Reason cleans.
If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
Self-sacrifice usually contains an unspoken demand for payment.
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
The time I kill is killing me.
Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.
Money: power at its most liquid.
Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.
The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.
Old and young disbelieve one another’s truths.
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.
I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
Fears and lies intensify consciousness.
Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.
A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
The real secrets are not the ones I tell.
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
Cure for an obsession: get another one.
Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
Eagerness to please attracts bullies and bores.
Hatred observes with more care than love does.
In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.
Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people’s.
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
Critic’s delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
The only peace is being out of earshot.
Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
Other people’s beliefs may be myths, but not mine.
Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.
Analysis is more likely to adjust evidence than to adjust itself.
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
Never ask a bore a question.
If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.
Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.
Out of power, Marxism can develop critical intelligence; in power, it quickly becomes stupid.
In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.
Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.
After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.
Don’t stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.
Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
The man in the street is always a stranger.
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
Why not – is a slogan for an interesting life.
While there’s life, there’s fear.
Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.
Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.
General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.
Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope’s company, and consider being duped no great matter.
I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
Romantics consider common sense vulgar.
If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.
When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.
The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
Even boredom has its crises.
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.
The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.
Self-reform is the only kind that works.
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
Modern thought does not offer consolations, but upsets.
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
Even cats grow lonely and anxious.
Many pains are imaginary, but all joys are real.
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.
If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.
As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.
The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.
My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
Art seduces, but does not exploit.
Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.
Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.
To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
