Mason Cooley Quotes

The cues that arouse desire are changed by Fashion, but feel like the proddings of Nature.

When I try to portray to myself my heart's desire, nothing happens.

I am kept in bondage by the moles of my beloved.

Habit keeps my life going, with occasional pushes from desire.

The cow's point of view deserves more literary attention.

Children enjoy inflicting pain until unhappiness teaches them tenderness.

Attacking a belief can be the first step toward embracing it.

I would like to be a figment of my own imagination, but belly and bowels will not permit.

Originality finds the unexpected but inevitable next step.

The grand style is available now only in old poems, museums, and parodies.

The noble style immobilizes its subjects.

Style disdains comfort and is always ready to sacrifice virtue.

I feel disappointed, but I don't remember just what I expected.

My secrets are petty but humiliating.

In New York, one must collapse to be indolent.

Self-satisfaction and self-pity are both condemned. What are people permitted to feel about themselves?

Self-realization sounds good. But what if only an enraged dwarf emerges?

People are not the way they are primarily in order to annoy me.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.

Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen are supposed to be looked after by others, like children and pets.

The Olympian gods cannot have grand passions because they cannot die.

Man invented the gods. Then the gods went off on their own, but not far.

When science drove the gods out of nature, they took refuge in poetry and the porticos of civic buildings.

My love grows wide and shallow in an effort to spread my losses.

Losing gracefully is commended but never chosen.

Without the blessing of cowardice, the world would long since have been torn to bits.

To succeed, find the right rut and stay with it.

I would enjoy experiencing the hollowness of success at first- hand.

I would be glad to worship success if I could find her.

My neglected duties crowd around me in my dreams, murmuring.

Duty is whatever opposes inclination.

Frivolous sorrow is folly. Frivolous enjoyment is not.

Sorrow also fulfills Desire. Example: the Soaps.

Cruel impulses stir all about my kindly heart.

Unlike other vices, cruelty, alas, is never boring.

Self-realization is a comedown from salvation, but still gives us something to hope for.

Victory brings obliviousness; defeat, attentiveness.

I tried self-sacrifice a couple of times in my youth.

The aphorist is a hit and run artist.

The aphorism is a slippery plaything.

The aphorism wants to be at the same time both main line and off beat.

A sentimental aphorism is even more a surprise than a hard- boiled sonnet.

To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.

Like a frog, the aphorist waits for something to fly by that he can catch with his tongue.

The perfect aphorism would achieve classical balance and then immediately upset it.

Aphorisms are not true or false, but pointed or flat.

Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.

Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.