Words matter. These are the best Mason Cooley Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
A blunt statement can be as false as any other.
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.
General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.
Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.
I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.
A blocked path also offers guidance.
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
Self-reform is the only kind that works.
Malice is always authentic and sincere.
Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.
Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
Never ask a bore a question.
The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.
When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.
After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.
Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
Romantics consider common sense vulgar.
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.
Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother’s hatred still comes as a surprise.
‘Be faithful to your roots’ is the liberal version of ‘Stay in your ghetto.’
Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.
The time I kill is killing me.
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
The body has a mind of its own.
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
Hatred observes with more care than love does.
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.
Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.
Mind and body obstruct one another’s pleasures.
Fears and lies intensify consciousness.
If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.
I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.
Sincerity: willingness to spend one’s own money.
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
Listening to people keeps them entertained.
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
Many gloat over their own troubles.
No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
Even boredom has its crises.
