Mason Cooley Quotes (220 Quotes)



    While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.

    Utility is our national shibboleth the savior of the American businessman is fact and his uterine half-brother, statistics.

    A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.

    Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?


    Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.

    If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.

    Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.

    Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.

    If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.


    Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.

    If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

    Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.

    Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

    The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.

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



    When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.

    What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.

    Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.

    Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

    Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.

    Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

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

    Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.


    The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.

    A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

    Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.

    An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.


    Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

    Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

    Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother's hatred still comes as a surprise.

    Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.

    An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.

    Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

    As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

    The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

    The man in the street is always a stranger.

    After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.

    To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.


    If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.

    Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.

    Health can be squandered, but not stored up.

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

    The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.


    Related Authors


    O. Henry - Napoleon Hill - Milan Kundera - Ivo Andric - George Axelrod - Denis Waitley - Charles Caleb Colton - Bram Stoker - Arthur C. Clarke - Agatha Christie


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