Mason Cooley Quotes

The critic roams through culture, looking for prey.

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

Ideologies can survive hostility, but not indifference.

Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

Folly always knows the answer.

I am skeptical in principle, gullible in practice.

The real secrets are not the ones I tell.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.

The time I kill is killing me.

Moralists love to discourse on the hollowness of success; about the hollowness of failure they are silent.

Suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and of madness.

Of course I want to be good, but that may not be to your advantage.

To make advice agreeable, try paradox or rhyme.

Call on literary convention, and it will gladly tell your story for you.

What is Providence for you may be Nemesis for me.

Old among the young, poor among the rich, I adopt an air of indefinable superiority.

In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything.

Symbolism erects a facade of respectability to hide the indecency of dreams.

Lechery is secretive, but must finally reveal itself to at least one.

After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.

Maxims are sharp-edged half-truths.

When a paradox is widely believed, it is no longer recognized as a paradox.

Thank God for the passing of the discomforts and vile cuisine of the age of chivalry!

My father was a patriarch inside a matriarchy, but never knew it.

I do not regret the folly of my youth, but the timidity.

Most people see no reason to stop arguing just because an issue has been decided.

A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.

To be fulfilled, a prophecy needs lots of flexibility.

I keep renaming my motives, but continue doing the same things.

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

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

Drunks do not have friends, but accomplices.

Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name.

Most bad luck is the misfortune of not being an exception.

Smooth white skin invites something that will leave a trace, a kiss or a slap.

Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.

In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.

Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.

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

Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.

Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

Lies save trouble now, but may return in thunder and lightning.

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

Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.

Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

Art chooses its constraints.

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

The lazy manage to keep up with the earth's rotation just as well as the industrious.