Mason Cooley Quotations | Page 3

The body has a mind of its own.

The beloved is the ultimate fetish.

Doubt is long-winded. Certainty is brief.

Don't milk the cow too hard. She will kick you.

Masturbation is a democratic pleasure, practiced by rich and poor, young and old, married and single.

The best propaganda omits rather than invents

Simplicity is a strict taskmaster.

Narcissus weeps to find that his Image does not return his love.

To a suicide: You just poisoned the wrong person.

The Media: bold sex and violence, timid politics and morals.

Nature knows no difference between weeds and flowers.

Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.

Boredom, not the will, is the mother of change. Necessity is the father.

The familiar changes as we cling to it.

Everything changes as it is written down.

Politicians love change, but of details only.

Every work of art changes its predecessors.

Many try to force the past to change.

Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.

We make some changes. But mostly changes make us.

Art can make chaos seductive.

Alone, I am drunk on my thoughts; in company, I am sober again.

Interpreting the dance: young women in white dancing in a ring can only be virgins; old women in black dancing in a ring can only be witches; but middle-aged women in colors, square dancing...?

The exhibitionist loves to flirt with shame

Generosity knows how to count, but refrains.

Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

Lonely people keep up a ceaseless flow of commentary on themselves.

In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth.

The critical spirit never knows when to stop meddling.

Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey.

When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.

Even alone we go on justifying ourselves.

Money: power at its most liquid.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

Courage, determination, and hard work are all very nice, but not so nice as an oil well in the back yard.

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

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

Every farewell combines loss and new freedom.

Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.

People who expect deference resent mere civility.

Laughing at our friends, we avenge the disappointment they have caused.

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

Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty-the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc.

Old photograph: amid the set poses of her family, a young girl smiles and raises her hand a little.

If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.

Dancers dance through their pain I shrink from mine.

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

Don't sacrifice yourself for me. I will not be grateful.

Sometimes I discover I have changed my mind because I have forgotten what I used to think.

Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions.

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

When you can't figure out what to do, it's time for a nap.

silence is the most intolerable of answers.

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

Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

Young men preen. Old men scheme.

We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

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

The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.

The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

Old and young disbelieve one another's truths.

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.

Never try to leap from a standstill.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.

Malice is always authentic and sincere.

Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.

Listening to people keeps them entertained.

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.

Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.

Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

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

Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.

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

Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.

If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.

I'm being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.

Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.

Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.

Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.

For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.

In the labyrinth of a difficult text, we find unmarked forks in the path, detours, blind alleys, loops that deliver us back to our point of entry, and finally the monster who whispers an unintelligible truth in our ears.

Orgies are an early form of what will someday become sex by committee.

Deconstruction: peering suspiciously at the text, I wait for it to make a slip and betray itself.

Every doctrine has a theory of the beginning.

Suspense combines curiosity with fear and pulls them up a rising slope.

All the powers of imagination combine in hypochondria.