Mason Cooley Quotes

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

Family romances are the only ones that never turn out happily.

The family is on its way out; couples go next; then no more keeping cats or parrots.

When disaster waves, I try not to wave back.

By multiplying ironies, I evade commitments.

I feel affluent or not according to what part of town I am in.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes.

Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.

Asceticism without religion is just another way of cultivating peculiar sensations.

Dieting is our last tie with asceticism.

Chastity is now treated as a sexual problem.

Amateurs believe their enthusiasm will suffice.

The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions.

Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption.

Health can be squandered, but not stored up.

After a moment of shrinking back, we domesticate the grotesque.

I am often attracted to people with whom I could not hold a five minute conversation.

The morose one refuses to smile even when he has just had his teeth cleaned.

Attaining even mediocrity is often a struggle.

In adding up her assets, the ambitious lady calculated the worth of her beautiful body as coldly as everything else.

The flesh of past lovers looks both familiar and strange.

Early every morning an old woman goes to the market to curse a grocery clerk, who curses back.

Dutch painting: daily life is enough.

Healthy vanity sweeps through life. Sickly vanity lies in bed.

Middle-aged adolescents are a libel on the real thing.

Flatter me, but delicately, please, for I am fastidious.

My mother's mild-eyed sadness looks at me from the eyes of those I love.

My mother wanted to shrink from my clinging, but did not.

My taking a seat on the Council of the Fathers caused a desperate fluttering among my ghosts.

If we knew enough, fortune would turn out to be nature.

The modest youth somehow knows just what to do for the cameras.

The Simple Life is not a simple life.

Drunks conjure an endless drama from their bottles.

The theme of my autobiography could only be repetition.

The New Right: kiss the bankers and spank the babies.

No one could be the way I remember my father.

Always assume that a lucky hit will not be repeated.

The sheen of ocean gleams on the blue fish-plate.

Authority is conferred by position, not character.

As I criss-cross the city hurrying, I feel always the unchanging cold beneath the pavement.

The transcendental promises a vacation from history.

It is not confused. We are.

The bathroom scale knows nothing of extenuating circumstances.

Pity drowns in numbers.

The question you're not supposed to ask is the important one.

Futility has become a great subject, full of opportunities.

Fear of my cruel impulses makes me kind.

I criticize myself ruthlessly, but never mention the faults of which I am truly ashamed.

I will not tolerate your faults. They are of no use to me.