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Life Quotes by Mason Cooley

67 Life quotes by Mason Cooley

All Life quotes Mason Cooley’s page

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Life is what it makes you.

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Wit saves us from being swallowed whole by life.

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Reading civilized the inner life.

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Thought maps existence; fantasy colors it.

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Money comes to life as it is spent.

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Life is always rich, thought only occasionally so.

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Life is struggle and sleep.

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The suburbs: signs of life, but no proofs.

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Whether I give to a beggar or not, his existence puts me in the wrong.

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Modernism: the books are as hard to understand as life itself.

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The squabbles of philandering Zeus and shrewish Hera are the Greeks' comment on married life.

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Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.

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Vicarious living is only slightly less impossible than vicarious eating.

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The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life.

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As I review my life, I feel I must have missed the point, either then or now.

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Once wealth and beauty are gone, there is always rural life.

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Ideas about life organize perception; names of emotions organize sensations; rules of syntax organize thought. But pain comes on its own.

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Commitments, not feelings, hold life together.

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I love you in my dreams, but not in real life.

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Living too long exacts a painful price.

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While there's life, there's fear.

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Old age likes indecency. It's a sign of life.

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The Simple Life is not a simple life.

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Why not - is a slogan for an interesting life.

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Life is the risk we cannot refuse.

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Whatever is spoken of acquires a certain existence.

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Dutch painting: daily life is enough.

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Life just keeps unfolding, ignoring our praise or blame.

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I like what I do for a living. I also like NOT doing it--perhaps even more.

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The Insignificance of Man is a congenial theme; my own insignificance is a sore point.

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The Ordinary Life: the misery seems planned, the happiness accidental.

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

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The pointless ferocities of intellectual life shock businessmen, who kill only to eat.

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In art, a dress is never just a dress; nor in life either.

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Not romance but companionship makes the happiness of daily life.

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If you should ever acknowledge my existence, I plan to snub you.

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I create my social existence by earning and spending.

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Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

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Everyone knows that (1) happiness is the goal of life, and (2) happiness is a chimera.

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Life is used up all the same, whether we save, spend, or waste it.

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More by Mason Cooley

Nostalgia keeps dissolving the ironic narratives in which I have contained my past.

The modernist writers found despair inspirational.

Even the most abject have a sense of superiority based on powerful though undefined merits.

Money comes to life as it is spent.

Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.

Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.

Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty-the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc.

Experience teaches us, but we scarcely know what.

The body has a mind of its own.

In retirement, I look for days off from my days off. Mason Cooley

My intentions go one way, my desires another. Thus I feel both self-indulgent and deprived.

The Puritan sours his pleasures by disguising them as duties.

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

Vacations prove that a life of pleasure is overrated.

Outside literature, high-flown sentiments are merely exasperating.