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Self Quotes by Mason Cooley

46 Self quotes by Mason Cooley

All Self quotes Mason Cooley’s page

Mason Cooley explores the clash between what we plan and what we truly want. He jokes that self‑righteous victims invite extra nails, and that self‑absorption can deepen loneliness without anyone noticing. He concludes that only self‑reform truly helps and that self‑love is not always reliable.

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My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

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Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption.

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Most self-laceration is more noisy than painful.

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I create my social existence by earning and spending.

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Self-reform is the only kind that works.

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Self-pity makes people callous.

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Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

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I tried self-sacrifice a couple of times in my youth.

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After sixty, the self-questioning of middle age is obsolete.

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Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.

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The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong.

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When I go out, I hope to leave the worst of myself at home.

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The self-righteous feel no need to be charming, and thus double their offensiveness.

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Self-realization sounds good. But what if only an enraged dwarf emerges?

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People are not the way they are primarily in order to annoy me.

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Self-realization is a comedown from salvation, but still gives us something to hope for.

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Self-righteous victims invite extra nails.

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Self-esteem is not based on itself.

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Guilt stirs me, but only to self-pity.

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Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others.

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Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.

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Self-analysis always cheats.

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Self-congratulation pleases only the speaker.

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Self-hatred is sometimes appropriate.

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Jealousy fuses megalomania and self-abandonment.

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I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

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Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.

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In love, self-love is always at risk.

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

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True self is the part of us that does not change when circumstances do.

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

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Self-conscious? Try a wig, a corset, a veil, a beard. Or cultivate shamelessness.

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Sexual attraction keeps throwing self-interest off course.

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I am the center of the world, but the control panel seems to be somewhere else.

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Self-satisfaction and self-pity are both condemned. What are people permitted to feel about themselves?

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Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity.

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Self-sacrifice usually contains an unspoken demand for payment.

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Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed.

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I am easy-going right up to the borders of my self-interest.

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Always clamping down on excitement is not self-control but fear.

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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.