Mason Cooley Quotes

Under attack, sentiments harden into dogma.

A budget takes the fun out of money.

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

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

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

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

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

Tears are great peace-makers.

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

Life is the risk we cannot refuse.

Envy awakens at the sound of a distant laugh.

After Voltaire: envy is chained to the portico of the temple of glory and can neither enter nor leave.

The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.

When my expectations are exactly fulfilled, I feel that something uncanny has happened.

I regret. I apologize. I blame myself. I continue as before.

Most self-laceration is more noisy than painful.

Life is what it makes you.

Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.

Life is struggle and sleep.

In the present age, a man with harmonious ideas is regarded as out of touch.

Regret leads to overeating and naps.

Cynicism often draws correct conclusions, but nobody could live by its lights.

Couples who come to understand one another often part.

Show enough regret, and your refusal will inspire gratitude.

My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit.

The lover as baby is a less troubling idea than the baby as lover.

Disillusionment is not truth.

I answered my father's demands for sympathy with silence.

Self-pity makes people callous.

Never lie in writing.

In philosophy, the principles are more interesting than the examples. In literature, the examples are more interesting than the principles.

Our vices are attempts to combine self-medication and enjoyment.

At the dinner table, if you can't think of anything to say, sit quietly. Don't throw rolls, or chew on your napkin.

My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.

When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.

Don't tell me it's raining when you're peeing on me!

Self-righteous victims invite extra nails.

Self-hatred is sometimes appropriate.

I read here and there in books, enjoying the examples and ignoring the argument.

I am too impatient to wait for temptation to come to me.

Either offer me something I really like, or stop trying to tempt me.

Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.

My noisy denunciation trails off in doubt.

Electricity, water, gas, and steam course through the walls of my building, keeping it alive.

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

Every perversion has survived many tests of its capabilities.

For some, bottles of liquor gleam like the towers of Eldorado.

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

The more knowledge, the clearer what the doubts are.