Famous Quotes by Mason Cooley
- Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption. More
- A successful restaurant makes everything in it, including the patrons, seem a little better than... More
- In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential. More
- A sure cure for boredom: fast until you are ravenous. More
- Myth shows human life arising out of chaos, cannibalism, and incest. Will it go back the way it... More
- Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability. More
- I am now old enough to make common cause with my predecessors against my successors. More
- Old men feel a slightly reluctant affection for one another. More
- I would enjoy experiencing the hollowness of success at first- hand. More
- Conformity makes everything easier, if you can still breathe. More
- Men and women would be even more unhappy if they really understood one another. More
- Everything changes as it is written down. More
- In conversation, everyone sits in confident judgment on the world. More
- Sometimes “Yes” is rhetoric enough. More
- I must like my profession, since I can hardly distinguish myself from it. More
- Nonsense is socially OK, but not stupidity. More
- Most people find just being themselves not enough of a show. More
- When science drove the gods out of nature, they took refuge in poetry and the porticos of civic... More
- Politics inflame the passions in a way that few beloveds can match. More
- As every cockroach knows, thriving on poisons is the secret of success. More
- Most self-laceration is more noisy than painful. More
- Nothing more cheerful than talking about our friends’ shortcomings. More
- Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it. More
- Ladies and gentlemen are supposed to be looked after by others, like children and pets. More
- As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay. More
- Malice is always authentic and sincere. More
- Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera. More
- Boredom, not the will, is the mother of change. Necessity is the father. More
- Necessity makes heroes of us all. More
- If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist’s office would be full of luminous ideas. More
- Dieting is our last tie with asceticism. More
- The family is on its way out; couples go next; then no more keeping cats or parrots. More
- Commitments, not feelings, hold life together. More
- The drinking and fighting of the Heroic Age have retreated to the slums. More
- New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every... More
- In adding up her assets, the ambitious lady calculated the worth of her beautiful body as coldly... More
- Cynicism has its own zealots. More
- Wallace Stevens: the Platonist celebrates endless change, but with regret. More
- An illicit love affair seems sweetly old-fashioned in the age of one night stands and orgies. More
- Snobs in pursuit of a mark are more shameless than the sluts of Sodom. More
- The aphorism sometimes casts off cynicism and expresses strong feeling. More
- The paper boy curses the dog through the latched screen door. More
- Your argument defends an ideology; mine defends the truth. More
- Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom. More
- Transcendence is something between a metaphor and a miracle. More
- Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful. More
- If you have no power, talk about your influence. If you have power, talk about the constraints... More
- I criticize myself ruthlessly, but never mention the faults of which I am truly ashamed. More
- The aphorist is a hit and run artist. More
- We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it. More
- The past is always waiting to entangle and deflect us. More
- For some, bottles of liquor gleam like the towers of Eldorado. More
- If you should ever acknowledge my existence, I plan to snub you. More
- The bathroom scale knows nothing of extenuating circumstances. More
- Constant talkers are unheard. More
- Timidity keeps me safe and sad in a narrow room. More
- Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids. More
- Don’t sacrifice yourself for me. I will not be grateful. More
- The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort. More
- Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment. More
- Alcohol postpones anxiety, then multiplies it. More
- Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating. More
- A dense undergrowth of extension cords sustains my upper world of lights, music, and machines of... More
- If everything had a label, we would live in a fully delineated but false world. More
- Electricity, water, gas, and steam course through the walls of my building, keeping it alive. More
- At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty. More
- Disappointment proves that expectations were mistaken. More
- Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day. More
- Without a little negligence, life would be intolerable. More
- Beware of wallflowers. They expect to have everything done for them. More
- Good advice is never as helpful as an interest-free loan. More
- If I had found the words I was looking for, I would not have read so much. More
- My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had. More
- We express disappointment in everything except ourselves. More
- Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create... More
- The world needs an enema. More
- Every perversion has survived many tests of its capabilities. More
- A blunt statement can be as false as any other. More
- Yawns are hard to refute. More
- Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations. More
- A beautiful woman peers out her window, as full of envy as the harridan who peers up at her from... More
- The eros of advertising is lurid but not specific. More
- Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is. More
- Getting ready: the show girl scratches her breast and shakes out her feathers. More
- My noisy denunciation trails off in doubt. More
- Thank God for the passing of the discomforts and vile cuisine of the age of chivalry! More
- Modern pictures banish depiction for interfering with the workings of paint. More
- Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics. More
- Imprudence gets us into more trouble than actual misdeeds do. More
- The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth. More
- Expenditure now attracts fame as conquest once did. More
- After desolation, grief brings back our humanity. More
- The horizon is more than a convention of landscape painting, less than truth. More
- Energy falls just short of being joy. More
- As I criss-cross the city hurrying, I feel always the unchanging cold beneath the pavement. More
- Good parties create a temporary youthfulness. More
- I will not tolerate your faults. They are of no use to me. More
- Flatter me, but delicately, please, for I am fastidious. More
- Prudence suspects that happiness is a bait set by risk. More
- Paradise endangered: garden snakes and mice are appearing in the shadowy corners of Dutch Old... More
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