Quotes By Mason Cooley

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.

Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

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

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

Young men preen. Old men scheme.

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.

The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.

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

Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.

Never try to leap from a standstill.

Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

Folly always knows the answer.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

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

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.

Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.

Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.

Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.