Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Mason Cooley Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
2
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
3
Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.
4
While there’s life, there’s fear.
5
Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?
6
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
7
People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.
8
The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.
9
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
10
Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.
11
Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.
12
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
13
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
14
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
15
Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.
16
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
17
A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.
18
Even cats grow lonely and anxious.
19
Even boredom has its crises.
20
A blocked path also offers guidance.
21
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
22
Self-reform is the only kind that works.
23
If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.
24
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
25
Rereading, we find a new book.
26
Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.
27
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
28
I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.
29
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
30
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.
31
Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.
32
Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.
33
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
34
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
35
My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.
36
Listening to people keeps them entertained.
37
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
38
Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.
39
The only peace is being out of earshot.
40
I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.
41
Young men preen. Old men scheme.
42
The man in the street is always a stranger.
43
It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.
44
I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.
45
I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.
46
Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.
47
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
48
Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.
49
Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.
50
I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.
51
Sincerity: willingness to spend one’s own money.
52
The real secrets are not the ones I tell.
53
Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.
54
If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.
55
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
56
Critic’s delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
57
Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.
58
Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.
59
Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.
60
Mind and body obstruct one another’s pleasures.
61
Never ask a bore a question.
62
Other people’s beliefs may be myths, but not mine.
63
If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.
64
Money: power at its most liquid.
65
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
66
Many gloat over their own troubles.
67
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
68
Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.
69
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
70
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
71
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
72
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
73
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
74
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
75
The time I kill is killing me.
76
Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.
77
Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.
78
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
79
The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
80
City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.
81
Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
82
In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.
83
Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.
84
Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.
85
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
86
In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.
87
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
88
In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.
89
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
90
No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
91
The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.
92
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
93
Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.
94
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
95
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
96
A blunt statement can be as false as any other.
97
Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.
98
Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.
99
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
100
As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.
101
Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.
102
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
103
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.
104
Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.
105
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
106
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
107
Fears and lies intensify consciousness.
108
Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.
109
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
110
Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.
111
People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.
112
Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.
113
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
114
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
115
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
116
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
117
Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen.
118
The body has a mind of its own.
119
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
120
Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.
121
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.
122
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
123
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
124
Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.
125
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
126
Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.
127
Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
128
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
129
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
130
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
131
Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.
132
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
133
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
134
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
135
The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.
136
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
137
To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.
138
My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.
139
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
140
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
141
The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.
142
Don’t stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.
143
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
144
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
145
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
146
I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.
147
Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother’s hatred still comes as a surprise.
148
Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.
149
Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.
150
Hatred observes with more care than love does.
151
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
