Mason Cooley Quotes

Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.

Manly men and womanly women are still here but feeling nervous.

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

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

Fearful of sentimentality, I disown my tears and melting heart.

The Lady: a fluty voice, sensible shoes, a melancholy sense of living by rules few still remember.

Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

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

The young are just as opinionated as the old, but have more exciting things to do than sit around airing their opinions all day.

In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques.

If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment.

Alone, I am satisfied with myself. With others, I am beset by troubling comparisons.

The young break rules for fun. The old for profit.

I am only interested in money because everyone else is.

A budget takes the fun out of money.

Under attack, sentiments harden into dogma.

Desire is wakeful; satisfaction dozes.

My intentions go one way, my desires another. Thus I feel both self-indulgent and deprived.

Seek and Hide: the Lover gazes at the Beloved. The Beloved looks away. The Beloved turns and looks at the Lover. The Lover runs away.

The nonsense that charms is close to sense.

Treat unhappiness as a defect and fewer would embrace it.

Sometimes I dread loneliness more than bores. Other times, the reverse.

I create my social existence by earning and spending.

Lawyers may reason powerfully, but power settles most issues.

The party out of office becomes the articulate one.

Everyone values the good nature of a man with a gun.

The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

My strengths make me contemptuous. My weaknesses make me charitable.

Home again, I can groan, scratch, and talk to myself.

Conformity makes everything easier, if you can still breathe.

Disappointment proves that expectations were mistaken.

Originality is in the eye of the beholder.

We express disappointment in everything except ourselves.

As night falls, every joy glows brighter.

Progress may feel more like loss than gain.

We often mistake the original part of ourselves for a weakness.

In New York, pretending to be above the struggle means no seat on the bus and a table next to the kitchen.

New York loves itself in an unkind and fanatical way.

An insult angers me. Being ignored crushes me.

Existence is not a mystery unless you think it has a meaning.

Experience teaches us, but we scarcely know what.

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

Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.

I tried good taste, but the strain was too much for me.

I seldom remember my father, but I sneeze and rub my nose the way he did. I also love my son with grief and anger, as he did.

Money comes to life as it is spent.

Commitments, not feelings, hold life together.

When love ends, the beloved is no longer standing on a pedestal, but in a hole.