Mason Cooley Quotes

A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.

If a problem is insoluble, it is Necessity. Leave it alone.

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

Lovers remain in the dark, working hard to keep out daylight.

Hope and despair ignore one another's cries.

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

Great talkers do not stop for breath, and never look at the clock.

Fame now wears the halo that once crowned holiness.

Retirement is a one-way trip to insignificance.

Curiosity, easily frightened, takes refuge in puzzles, murder mysteries, and spectator sports.

My obsessions used to be my protectors, but now they have taken me prisoner.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

Wisdom cannot prevent a fall, but may cushion it.

Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.

Every seeming equality conceals a hierarchy.

The exhibitionist loves to flirt with shame

Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange.

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

Prudence does not make people happy; it merely deprives them of the excitement of being constantly in trouble.

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

Advice is more agreeable in the mouth than in the ear.

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

The past is ignorant of the present. Be careful in taking its advice.

Vacations prove that a life of pleasure is overrated.

The limitations of pleasure cannot be overcome by more pleasure.

A modest demeanor arouses thoughts of seduction.

Joy goes as deep as sorrow, but leaves less of itself behind.

I have a special grudge against those who have the same faults as I do.

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

Unhappiness is too common to call for special measures.

Helplessness is a mighty power.

Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.

The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit.

Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.

Revenge is sweet but not nourishing.

King Kong, Count Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera are just looking for love, like the rest of us.

Anyone who feels like a fool has made a good beginning.

Your need to talk does not create in me a need to listen.

Once discover comfort, and there is no turning back.

My mind no longer has romantic abysses, but has become shallow, with many little gaps and cracks.

Prudence does not save us, but shows us pictures of our destroyers.

Envy grieves. Jealousy rages.

The limits of prudence: one cannot jump out of a burning building gradually.

Moderation shifts when extremes do.

Talk shows are proof that conversation is dead.

Pedagogical romances leave the mentor disgruntled, the pupil confused.

Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others.

Enough is ever-receding.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

A free spirit must be able to surmount anxiety time after time.