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Time Quotes by Mason Cooley

53 Time quotes by Mason Cooley

All Time quotes Mason Cooley’s page

Mason Cooley writes that nostalgia dissolves the ironic stories we tell about our past. He notes that compassion can pause us and lift us above ourselves for a moment. He also says a free spirit must learn to rise over anxiety again and again. His quotes blend reflection on time, feeling, and inner strength.

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A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.

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Repetition comforts me for a time, then closes in.

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When you can't figure out what to do, it's time for a nap.

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Age: I go slower as time goes faster.

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Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.

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

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Being charming takes time and effort, and I am busy.

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The present necessarily betrays the past.

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Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

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The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

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The power of the past does not depend on our knowledge of it.

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After a moment of shrinking back, we domesticate the grotesque.

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Neat trick: to be roused to ambition and reconciled to one's mediocrity at the same time.

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Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?

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After I have said what is required by my vanity and my morality, I may find a moment for Truth.

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To avoid tripping on the chain of the past, you have to pick it up and wind it about you.

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Mars and Venus are at it again. This time, Hephaestus is standing by with a private detective, a photographer, and a lawyer.

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Great men wait for the right moment to abandon caution. The rest of us abandon it when impatience becomes too much for…

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For the purpose of knowledge, one must know how to use that inner current that draws us to a thing, and then…

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Studying the past may suggest new ways of going wrong.

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Regret for wasted time is more wasted time

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The time I kill is killing me.

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Regretting the past does not prevent me from repeating it.

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Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.

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A quiet fool can go undiscovered for a long time.

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Every good time that goes on too long turns into a hell.

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Many try to force the past to change.

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To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.

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The right time to die is never exactly now.

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The past is always waiting to entangle and deflect us.

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The older we become, the more certain our future.

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If I want my time wasted, I'll waste it myself.

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Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.

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The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.

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A moment of eloquence enthralls us. An hour's worth leaves us stupefied.

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Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return.

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

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At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.

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

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Lack of reciprocity ruins friendships, but makes love affairs exciting for a time.

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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.