Mason Cooley Quotes

Scholars dream of finding small facts pregnant with great progeny.

Every doctrine has a theory of the beginning.

I am forbidden sugar, fat, and alcohol. So hooray, I guess, for oatmeal, lemon juice, and chicken soup.

Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.

In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.

If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.

My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.

I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.

I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.

Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.

The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.

I cling to depression, thinking it a form of truth.

English has borrowed from everywhere and now goes everywhere.

Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.

History takes place between the Fall and the Apocalypse, with a narrow escape route called Salvation.

Truth-telling frightens me. Lying confuses me.

The grandeur of a philosophy does not certify its truth.

Truth usually stammers at first.

We sometimes find truth, but more often it finds us.

Only the strong and the hopeful are able to revolt.

I am invigorated by work, wasted by pleasure.

Nothing easier than to confuse busyness with goodness.

Work at first rescues us, then ravages us.

Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.

The Ancient Mariner seizes the guest at the wedding feast and will not let go until he has told all his story: the prototype of the bore.

The irrational may be attractive in the abstract, but not in cab drives, dinner guests, or elderly relatives.

Some eras worship infancy; some, the aged. None as yet has adored middle age.

The absolute has moved into the fortress of the absurd.

Talent shuffles the deck. Genius brings a new deck.

Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it.

I alternate between reading cook books and reading diet books.

No one can remember himself as an unpleasant child.

Comedy distances pain, but leaves signs of it everywhere.

A sense of absurdity interferes with my efforts to appear venerable.

Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.

The beginning sets the rules.

Reclusive? The inner city will secure your privacy better than any desert cave.

The price of telling your troubles is having to listen to advice.

Facts do not give advice.

In conversation, everyone sits in confident judgment on the world.

Metaphors convince at once or not at all.

My nostalgia is for the impossible.

Make the expectations lively enough, and action will follow.

A moment of eloquence enthralls us. An hour's worth leaves us stupefied.

After ages of bombast, the rhetoric of virtue has become ironic and shy.

Confess to the misdeeds you cannot hide.

Do as you like--if you know what it is.

Genius knows where the questions are hidden.