Mason Cooley Quotes

No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.

Vice is a dreary business. And virtue is not a lot of fun, either.

Skepticism does not preserve us from foolhardy deeds.

Pride sings and dances; humility sighs.

The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.

Faith of the bore: everything is worth saying.

True self is the part of us that does not change when circumstances do.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.

Altruism is for those who cannot endure their desires.

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.

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

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

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

Contempt for others, like masturbation, is best as a secret pleasure.

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

Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.

The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.

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

Sleaze is a point by point refutation of elegance.

The self-righteous feel no need to be charming, and thus double their offensiveness.

A restaurant with candles and flowers evokes more reveries than the Isle of Bali does.

Always late: thus I make you the prisoner of my freedom.

Some live in a state of passionate indecision.

Sexual boredom is ousting sexual deviance as the problem.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.

Complainers rule out happiness, mentioning it only as something lost.

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

If your nose is up in the air, you cannot see where you are going.

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

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

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

Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger.

To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.

Beggars remind us that not all miseries arise from our ideas.

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

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

At retirement, switching from "I must" to "I want" leaves me puzzled and uneasy.

All anger feels like righteous anger; sorrow does not care whether it is righteous or not.

The meaning of today will not be clear until tomorrow.

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

Folly always knows the answer.

The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.

I am skeptical in principle, gullible in practice.

The critic roams through culture, looking for prey.

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential.