Mason Cooley Quotes

The perfect pleasure: money is neither fattening nor immoral nor illegal.

Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.

A fastidious taste is best indoors, away from nature and the city.

The power of the past does not depend on our knowledge of it.

The absolute has moved into the fortress of the absurd.

Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.

Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.

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

The time I kill is killing me.

A well-paid occupation is seldom spoken of as "rewarding.

Folly always knows the answer.

Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.

Pity drowns in numbers.

What's the good of being stoical if nobody notices?

Drugs bring us to to the gates of paradise, then keep us from entering.

One eventually has enough even of oneself.

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.

Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

My reluctant charity shames both me and the recipient.

Life is what it makes you.

Modern pictures banish depiction for interfering with the workings of paint.

As a dream comes true, it falls flat.

Joy goes as deep as sorrow, but leaves less of itself behind.

After desolation, grief brings back our humanity.

The aphorism wants to be at the same time both main line and off beat.

Sincerity guarantees nothing but itself.

If I want my time wasted, I'll waste it myself.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

Full of troubles, the mind is still the only Garden of Delight.

God has replaced sex as the unmentionable.

The cues that arouse desire are changed by Fashion, but feel like the proddings of Nature.

Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.

Don Juan tries not to see the skeptical winks that greet his boasting.

Self-realization sounds good. But what if only an enraged dwarf emerges?

Children must be protected not because they are innocent but because they are powerless.

The best propaganda omits rather than invents

The irrational may be attractive in the abstract, but not in cab drives, dinner guests, or elderly relatives.

Boredom and fear keep us working and obeying the laws.

Trust, but look for the exits.

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

Lawyers may reason powerfully, but power settles most issues.

Sexual attraction makes the strangest bedfellows of all.

Good deal: justice for you, mercy for me.

Skepticism does not preserve us from foolhardy deeds.

Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.

Cynicism formulates issues clearly, but only to dismiss them.