Mason Cooley Quotes

A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.

The sacred is found boring by many who find the uncanny fascinating.

Beautiful people are forgiven more often than the rest.

Beauty compels us; reason merely cajoles.

I feel that I have something significant to say, but I cannot think what it is.

A small boy puts his hand on the wall, and looks down intently as he wriggles his toes. The birth of thought?

To make a thought my own, I must think it often.

Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.

Thought enables us to see Fate coming.

Travelling carries me to the surface, away from the deeps of home-thoughts.

Thought maps existence; fantasy colors it.

Life is always rich, thought only occasionally so.

No matter how close thought sticks to the actual, it follows its own rules.

Mathematics: silent harmonies. Music: sounding numbers.

The harp is an insipid instrument--no good for dancing, feasting, or marching, only for sitting primly in a parlor or on a cloud.

To avoid discord, never put two wise people in the same room.

As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age.

Wisdom has lost repute because it so often applies to a state of affairs that no longer exists.

Wisdom knows when to return death's embrace.

My mentors grow old and foolish. I am afraid.

The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds.

I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.

With age, comfort becomes more seductive than beauty.

The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

With age, the mind grows slower and more wily.

The imaginary audience for my life is growing small and silent.

With decrepitude, longevity has overshot the mark.

I am now old enough to make common cause with my predecessors against my successors.

Youth demands more than ordinary life. Age clings to it.

As the tenor roars his passion, I think sadly of my spreading middle, and his.

The noisy vacancy of youth, the quiet vacancy of age.

Growth provides novel experiences for youth; decay the same, alas, for age.

After sixty, the self-questioning of middle age is obsolete.

Prudence suspects that happiness is a bait set by risk.

The supposed unhappiness of the rich is always a cheerful topic of conversation.

You are as happy as you think you are, but not necessarily as miserable as you imagine.

Pleasure usually comes when called, but not happiness.

Cheerfulness is a policy; happiness is a talent.

Happiness is often hard-hearted.

Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.

Faith no doubt moves mountains, but not necessarily to where we want them.

Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

Language cannot say everything, fortunately.

Reversing a proposition rearranges its terms, but still keeps out new terms.

History goes out of control almost as often as nature does.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

Birth dates and bathroom scales tell more truth than I want to know.