Mason Cooley

Sensuality takes planning and work.

— Mason Cooley

Fear of my cruel impulses makes me kind.

— Mason Cooley

Life is what it makes you.

— Mason Cooley

City wits, country humorists.

— Mason Cooley

Truth usually stammers at first.

— Mason Cooley

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

— Mason Cooley

Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

— Mason Cooley

If folly disappeared, wit would starve.

— Mason Cooley

Beggars beg to get money, not to reproach the passerby.

— Mason Cooley

Aphorisms are not true or false, but pointed or flat.

— Mason Cooley

Explanations comfort us by giving the impression that there is an order in things.

— Mason Cooley

Self-blame usually has an undertone of self-congratulation.

— Mason Cooley

Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Some subjects come up suddenly in our speech and cannot be silenced.

— Mason Cooley

Many count on their disadvantages to cover for them.

— Mason Cooley

The plastic surgeon's knife slashes at time, which may seem to retreat, but then keeps on coming.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Errors are more numerous than truths, but fortunately too divided among themselves to take power.

— Mason Cooley

Masturbation is a democratic pleasure, practiced by rich and poor, young and old, married and single.

— Mason Cooley

Cheap thrill: moral outrage revels in its own innocence and in the guilt of the wicked Others.

— Mason Cooley

Arrogance rides triumphantly through the gates, barely glancing at the old woman about to cut the rope and spring shut the trap.

— Mason Cooley

Old among the young, poor among the rich, I adopt an air of indefinable superiority.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

In the labyrinth of a difficult text, we find unmarked forks in the path, detours, blind alleys, loops that deliver us back…

— Mason Cooley

To be a social success, do not act pathetic, arrogant, or bored. Do not discuss your unhappy childhood, your visit to the…

— Mason Cooley

Interpreting the dance: young women in white dancing in a ring can only be virgins; old women in black dancing in a…

— Mason Cooley

Never invite to dinner: those who won't decide until the last minute; those who come more than half an hour late; those…

— Mason Cooley

Many gloat over their own troubles.

— Mason Cooley

Dieting is our last tie with asceticism.

— Mason Cooley

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

— Mason Cooley

Only death goes deeper than sex.

— Mason Cooley

Reading civilized the inner life.

— Mason Cooley

Confess to the misdeeds you cannot hide.

— Mason Cooley

Orgasm: the genitals sneezing.

— Mason Cooley

Silence kills scandal.

— Mason Cooley

Simplicity is a strict taskmaster.

— Mason Cooley

The present necessarily betrays the past.

— Mason Cooley

The aphorist is a hit and run artist.

— Mason Cooley

Pride sings and dances; humility sighs.

— Mason Cooley