Mason Cooley was professor emeritus of English, speech and world literature at the College
of Staten Island. He received his B.A. from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. from Oxford.
Read our list of Mason Cooley Quotes and Aphorisms
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
Mason Cooley
Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.
Mason Cooley
Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.
Mason Cooley
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
Mason Cooley
Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.
Mason Cooley
Self-reform is the only kind that works.
Mason Cooley
Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.
Mason Cooley
Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen.
Mason Cooley
The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.
Mason Cooley
Sincerity: willingness to spend one’s own money.
Mason Cooley
Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.
Mason Cooley
The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one’s greatness of soul.
Mason Cooley
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people’s.
Mason Cooley
The beloved is the ultimate fetish.
Mason Cooley
The body has a mind of its own.
Mason Cooley
Romantics consider common sense vulgar.
Mason Cooley
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
Mason Cooley
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
Mason Cooley
The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.
Mason Cooley
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
Mason Cooley
The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.
Mason Cooley
Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.
Mason Cooley
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
Mason Cooley
Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.
Mason Cooley
Old and young disbelieve one another’s truths.
Mason Cooley
Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.
Mason Cooley
Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.
Mason Cooley
Orgasm: the genitals sneezing.
Mason Cooley
Other people’s beliefs may be myths, but not mine.
Mason Cooley
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
Mason Cooley
People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.
Mason Cooley
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
Mason Cooley
Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.
Mason Cooley
Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.
Mason Cooley
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
Mason Cooley
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
Mason Cooley
The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.
Mason Cooley
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
Mason Cooley
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
Mason Cooley
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.
Mason Cooley
Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.
Mason Cooley
Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.
Mason Cooley
Rereading, we find a new book.
Mason Cooley
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
Mason Cooley
People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.
Mason Cooley
Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?
Mason Cooley
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
Mason Cooley
We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.
Mason Cooley
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
Mason Cooley
Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.
Mason Cooley
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
Mason Cooley
When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.
Mason Cooley
When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.
Mason Cooley
When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.
Mason Cooley
The passion for money is never fickle.
Mason Cooley
While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.
Mason Cooley
Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.
Mason Cooley
Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?
Mason Cooley
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
Mason Cooley
Women encourage men to be childish, then scold them.
Mason Cooley
Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.
Mason Cooley
Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.
Mason Cooley
Young men preen. Old men scheme.
Mason Cooley
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Mason Cooley
Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.
Mason Cooley
Many gloat over their own troubles.
Mason Cooley
While there’s life, there’s fear.
Mason Cooley
The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.
Mason Cooley
The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.
Mason Cooley
The man in the street is always a stranger.
Mason Cooley
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
Mason Cooley
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
Mason Cooley
The only peace is being out of earshot.
Mason Cooley
The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.
Mason Cooley
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
Mason Cooley
The real secrets are not the ones I tell.
Mason Cooley
The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
Mason Cooley
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
Mason Cooley
The time I kill is killing me.
Mason Cooley
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
Mason Cooley
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
Mason Cooley
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
Mason Cooley
Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.
Mason Cooley
Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.
Mason Cooley
To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.
Mason Cooley
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
Mason Cooley
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
Mason Cooley
To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.
Mason Cooley
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
Mason Cooley
The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.
Mason Cooley
I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.
Mason Cooley
If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.
Mason Cooley
Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.
Mason Cooley
General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.
Mason Cooley
Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.
Mason Cooley
Hatred observes with more care than love does.
Mason Cooley
Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother’s hatred still comes as a surprise.
Mason Cooley
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
Mason Cooley
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
Mason Cooley
Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.
Mason Cooley
I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.
Mason Cooley
For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.
Mason Cooley
I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.
Mason Cooley
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
Mason Cooley
I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.
Mason Cooley
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
Mason Cooley
If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.
Mason Cooley
If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.
Mason Cooley
If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.
Mason Cooley
If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.
Mason Cooley
If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.
Mason Cooley
I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.
Mason Cooley
Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
Mason Cooley
Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.
Mason Cooley
Even boredom has its crises.
Mason Cooley
Even cats grow lonely and anxious.
Mason Cooley
Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.
Mason Cooley
Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.
Mason Cooley
Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.
Mason Cooley
Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
Mason Cooley
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
Mason Cooley
Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.
Mason Cooley
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
Mason Cooley
I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.
Mason Cooley
Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.
Mason Cooley
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
Mason Cooley
Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.
Mason Cooley
Fears and lies intensify consciousness.
Mason Cooley
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
Mason Cooley
Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.
Mason Cooley
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
Mason Cooley
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
Mason Cooley
Folly always knows the answer.
Mason Cooley
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
Mason Cooley
If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.
Mason Cooley
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
Mason Cooley
Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
Mason Cooley
Malice is always authentic and sincere.
Mason Cooley
Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.
Mason Cooley
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
Mason Cooley
Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.
Mason Cooley
Mind and body obstruct one another’s pleasures.
Mason Cooley
Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.
Mason Cooley
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
Mason Cooley
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
Mason Cooley
Money: power at its most liquid.
Mason Cooley
Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.
Mason Cooley
Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.
Mason Cooley
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
Mason Cooley
My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.
Mason Cooley
My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.
Mason Cooley
My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.
Mason Cooley
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
Mason Cooley
Never ask a bore a question.
Mason Cooley
Never try to leap from a standstill.
Mason Cooley
No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
Mason Cooley
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
Mason Cooley
In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.
Mason Cooley
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
Mason Cooley
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
Mason Cooley
If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.
Mason Cooley
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
Mason Cooley
In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.
Mason Cooley
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
Mason Cooley
In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.
Mason Cooley
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
Mason Cooley
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
Mason Cooley
Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.
Mason Cooley
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
Mason Cooley
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
Mason Cooley
Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.
Mason Cooley
In every death, a busy world comes to an end.
Mason Cooley
It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.
Mason Cooley
Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.
Mason Cooley
Listening to people keeps them entertained.
Mason Cooley
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.
Mason Cooley
Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.
Mason Cooley
Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.
Mason Cooley
Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.
Mason Cooley
Don’t stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.
Mason Cooley
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
Mason Cooley
Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.
Mason Cooley
Critic’s delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
Mason Cooley
Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.
Mason Cooley
Cure for an obsession: get another one.
Mason Cooley
Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.
Mason Cooley
Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.
Mason Cooley
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
Mason Cooley
Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.
Mason Cooley
A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.
Mason Cooley
Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.
Mason Cooley
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
Mason Cooley
Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.
Mason Cooley
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
Mason Cooley
A blocked path also offers guidance.
Mason Cooley
A blunt statement can be as false as any other.
Mason Cooley
A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.
Mason Cooley
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.
Mason Cooley
A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.
Mason Cooley
After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.
Mason Cooley
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
Mason Cooley
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
Mason Cooley
Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.
Mason Cooley
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
Mason Cooley
City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.
Mason Cooley
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
Mason Cooley
Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.
Mason Cooley
Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.
Mason Cooley
Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.
Mason Cooley
‘Be faithful to your roots’ is the liberal version of ‘Stay in your ghetto.’
Mason Cooley
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.
Mason Cooley
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
Mason Cooley
As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.
Mason Cooley
Art seduces, but does not exploit.
Mason Cooley
