Mason cooley quotes

If you corner me, you are going to hear some unwelcome truths.

Eagerness to please attracts bullies and bores.

Every farewell combines loss and new freedom.

As soon as I hear of a right, I want it.

Do not wait for a reason to be happy.

I have forgiven you. Nevertheless, begone!

Fear of trying causes paralysis. Trying causes only trembling and sweating.

Vanity well fed is benevolent. Vanity hungry is spiteful.

Studying the past may suggest new ways of going wrong.

Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.

Silence kills scandal.

Political correctness is driving machismo underground and recalling effeminacy from exile.

Sincerity guarantees nothing but itself.

I love money, but will money ever love me in return?

Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.

A quick smile is more seductive than a slinky dress.

If you belong to the underclass, you are already guilty.

Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.

You know you're in love when you stop comparing.

Those who follow where their genitals lead them often wind up in tedious company.

The meaning of today will not be clear until tomorrow.

Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.

Theory can leave questions unanswered, but practice has to come up with something.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

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

A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

The narcissist enjoys being looked at and not looking back.

Most of us live in a world that has ceased to exist.

Moderation in all things is best, but it's pretty hard to get excited about it.

Jealousy fuses megalomania and self-abandonment.

We often disguise our reflexes as deliberate actions.

Your need to talk does not create in me a need to listen.

Free competition exists inside shelters of law, custom, insurance, political approval, and carefully protected status.

Faith no doubt moves mountains, but not necessarily to where we want them.

Not romance but companionship makes the happiness of daily life.

Cure for an obsession: get another one.

Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.

I keep eating for fear I will be hungry.

You are so tactful that I have no idea what you want.

Love talks and talks. Lust is brief and to the point.

In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.

Age: I go slower as time goes faster.

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

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

One's fetishes are fascinating, but not because of their beauty or significance. The same could be said for one's genitals, or one's children.

The children of childish parents age quickly.

Modern thought does not offer consolations, but upsets.

A free spirit must be able to surmount anxiety time after time.

Talk shows are proof that conversation is dead.

The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.

Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.

Intelligence makes sincerity difficult.

The great advantage of a new friend is that we have not yet found one another out.

Many pains are imaginary, but all joys are real.

Weakness is a better teacher than strength. Weakness must learn to understand the obstacles that strength brushes aside.

Envy grieves. Jealousy rages.

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

Stupidity is a fact of life, but unmentionable. The new Prudery.

Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand.

With age, I have become both more pious and more shameless.

You are as happy as you think you are, but not necessarily as miserable as you imagine.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.

Every declaration of love contains an unstated list of exceptions and demands.

Swindlers are notoriously gullible.

Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.

The Puritan sours his pleasures by disguising them as duties.

Constant talkers are unheard.

Later is always my first choice.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The little suckings and smackings of the perversions are the sounds of joyous infancy.

Analysis is more likely to adjust evidence than to adjust itself.

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.

Never trust the judgment of an enthusiastic man; never trust the promises of a lazy one.

Those who refuse to play second fiddle may wind up playing no fiddle at all.

Genius knows where the questions are hidden.

Regretting the past does not prevent me from repeating it.

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

The lion cares less about being king of the beasts than about finding his dinner.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

To avoid doing anything, wait for the right circumstances.

Magic lives in curves, not angles.

Out of power, Marxism can develop critical intelligence; in power, it quickly becomes stupid.

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

I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.

Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange.

Reading gives you some place to go when you have to stay where you are.

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.

A goldfish is reason enough for living, if someone needs a reason.

Nothing is more cheerful than talking about our friends' shortcomings.

We make some changes. But mostly changes make us.

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

Secrets die when kept or revealed. They live by being faintly and uncertainly repeated.

Work saves us from melancholy. Pleasure exposes us to it.

A blocked path also offers guidance.

We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.

I really like life, don't you? There's nothing else quite like it.

Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.

Living alone is good for privacy, bad for full-scale cooking and moving heavy furniture.

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.

Fears and lies intensify consciousness.

Human nature is a scoundrel's favorite explanation.

Sweet smiles soften judgment. Sweet haunches unseat it.

The Insignificance of Man is a congenial theme; my own insignificance is a sore point.

A sheep who goes looking for a wolf is sure to find one.

The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.

An event is not over until everyone is tired of talking about it.

Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.

The desire to be significant casts a pall.

Our punning minds rejoin what logic has separated.

Passion cooks. Reason cleans.

Why not - is a slogan for an interesting life.

Self-sacrifice usually contains an unspoken demand for payment.

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does.

Unconditional love is a lofty ideal, but unconditional hate is a fact well documented by history.

Between repetition and forgetting, it is a marvel that a new thought ever struggles into existence.

Forget what hurt you but never forget what it thaught you.

An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.

Oblivion waits without beckoning or threatening.

The language of pornography is abusive, that of romance adoring. Both are addressed to a fetish.

Sacred or not, sacrifice is an ugly business.

Trust, but look for the exits.