Mason Cooley Quotes

#1. Without the blessing of cowardice, the world would long since have been torn to bits.

Mason Cooley

#2. Passion impels our deeds; ideology supplies the explanations.

Mason Cooley

#3. Always assume that a lucky hit will not be repeated.

Mason Cooley

#4. I win on my merits; my opponents win by cheating.

Mason Cooley

#5. Great men wait for the right moment to abandon caution. The rest of us abandon it when impatience becomes too much for us.

Mason Cooley

#6. The familiar changes as we cling to it.

Mason Cooley

#7. The eros of advertising is lurid but not specific.

Mason Cooley

#8. Small faults and virtues are for daily life. The big ones are for emergencies.

Mason Cooley

#9. In new situations, I look carefully at appearances. In familiar ones, I glance.

Mason Cooley

#10. If I can't serve as a role model, let me serve as a warning.

Mason Cooley

#11. Inevitably, almost everything we say is either quotation or paraphrase.

Mason Cooley

#12. Nonsense is socially OK, but not stupidity.

Mason Cooley

#13. Sentimentality is the respect the cold-hearted pay to feeling.

Mason Cooley

#14. Wealth makes the laws that poverty must obey.

Mason Cooley

#15. Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

Mason Cooley

#16. After rejection - misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere.

Mason Cooley

#17. When my expectations are exactly fulfilled, I feel that something uncanny has happened.

Mason Cooley

#18. The mind scolds the heart, which makes excuses and goes its own way.

Mason Cooley

#19. The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

Mason Cooley

#20. When love ends, we cry out against destiny. When friendship ends, we cry out against our friend.

Mason Cooley

#21. 'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Mason Cooley

#22. The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong.

Mason Cooley

#23. A restaurant with candles and flowers evokes more reveries than the Isle of Bali does.

Mason Cooley

#24. Boast quietly, with decorum.

Mason Cooley

#25. Folly always knows the answer.

Mason Cooley

#26. Mars and Venus are at it again. This time, Hephaestus is standing by with a private detective, a photographer, and a lawyer.

Mason Cooley

#27. Once discover comfort, and there is no turning back.

Mason Cooley

#28. Cruel impulses stir all about my kindly heart.

Mason Cooley

#29. Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.

Mason Cooley

#30. No one could be the way I remember my father.

Mason Cooley

#31. Complaining is the favorite pastime of millions.

Mason Cooley

#32. If you do not throw in a few promises of better things to come, gloomy one, I am going to take you back to the library.

Mason Cooley

#33. Somehow the body keeps life going despite the ravaging negations of the mind.

Mason Cooley

#34. Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.

Mason Cooley

#35. Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.

Mason Cooley

#36. Rage against the world, if you like, but quietly, or the Guardians will awake.

Mason Cooley

#37. No need to be sentimental to mourn the loss of Paradise.

Mason Cooley

#38. The trouble with the young people today is that it is they who are young.

Mason Cooley

#39. Some eras worship infancy; some, the aged. None as yet has adored middle age.

Mason Cooley

#40. Imprudence gets us into more trouble than actual misdeeds do.

Mason Cooley

#41. Self-esteem is not based on itself.

Mason Cooley

#42. Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

Mason Cooley

#43. The passion for money is never fickle.

Mason Cooley

#44. Snarls and sobs show that a love affair is getting serious.

Mason Cooley

#45. The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.

Mason Cooley

#46. Reason argues the case, but fact may determine the judgment.

Mason Cooley

#47. The beginning sets the rules.

Mason Cooley

#48. Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others.

Mason Cooley

#49. A frog in love would not be enchanted to learn that her beloved had turned into Prince Charming.

Mason Cooley

#50. The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

Mason Cooley

#51. When love ends, the beloved is no longer standing on a pedestal, but in a hole.

Mason Cooley

#52. The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

Mason Cooley

#53. The Simple Life is not a simple life.

Mason Cooley

#54. In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques.

Mason Cooley

#55. Music dissolves the straight and narrow.

Mason Cooley

#56. Every work of art changes its predecessors.

Mason Cooley

#57. Prudence suspects that happiness is a bait set by risk.

Mason Cooley

#58. Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

Mason Cooley

#59. The psychiatrist's office: the only place I can be sure my story will be treated as sad, but interesting.

Mason Cooley

#60. Nudity is the costume of lovers and corpses.

Mason Cooley

#61. Home again, I can groan, scratch, and talk to myself.

Mason Cooley

#62. Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

Mason Cooley

#63. Both faith and cynicism make judgment too easy.

Mason Cooley

#64. Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.

Mason Cooley

#65. Aphorisms know the angles, but not the structure.

Mason Cooley

#66. The rich are happier than we are, and should be.

Mason Cooley

#67. Fears and lies intensify consciousness.

Mason Cooley

#68. Without a little negligence, life would be intolerable.

Mason Cooley

#69. Self-reform is the only kind that works.

Mason Cooley

#70. The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.

Mason Cooley

#71. Memory is imagination pinned down.

Mason Cooley

#72. Shameless: Punish me for my desire if you will. It burns still.

Mason Cooley

#73. Swindlers are notoriously gullible.

Mason Cooley

#74. Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

Mason Cooley

#75. In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential.

Mason Cooley

#76. Sleaze is a point by point refutation of elegance.

Mason Cooley

#77. Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Mason Cooley

#78. Boredom is the only sure cure for neurosis.

Mason Cooley

#79. To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.

Mason Cooley

#80. Loving, not the beloved, is the joy of love. The beloved, knowing this, most resolutely declines to be grateful.

Mason Cooley

#81. Health can be squandered, but not stored up.

Mason Cooley

#82. Life is what it makes you.

Mason Cooley

#83. The writer is always courted by invitations from the all-too- familiar.

Mason Cooley

#84. In love as in art, good technique helps.

Mason Cooley

#85. Now that I see you understand me so well, I will avoid you.

Mason Cooley

#86. Shaw writes as if it were always midday.

Mason Cooley

#87. My nostalgia is for the impossible.

Mason Cooley

#88. Symbolism erects a facade of respectability to hide the indecency of dreams.

Mason Cooley

#89. Pride sings and dances; humility sighs.

Mason Cooley

#90. If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

Mason Cooley

#91. Your flattery is as full of contempt as your insults were.

Mason Cooley

#92. As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.

Mason Cooley

#93. Couples who come to understand one another often part.

Mason Cooley

#94. Magic lives in curves, not angles.

Mason Cooley

#95. Habit keeps my life going, with occasional pushes from desire.

Mason Cooley

#96. Opportunity often goes begging. Luck, never.

Mason Cooley

#97. The cow's point of view deserves more literary attention.

Mason Cooley

#98. Never ask a bore a question.

Mason Cooley

#99. Never try to leap from a standstill.

Mason Cooley

#100. Many have never felt strong, but everyone knows what it is to feel weak.

Mason Cooley