Mason Cooley

Eccentricity gives misfits a way of fitting in.

— Mason Cooley

We often disguise our reflexes as deliberate actions.

— Mason Cooley

Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.

— Mason Cooley

A moratorium on opportunities, please. I need to recover from the last one.

— Mason Cooley

The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

— Mason Cooley

Fortuna smiles and frowns according to a timetable surprising even to herself.

— Mason Cooley

Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.

— Mason Cooley

To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.

— Mason Cooley

Free competition exists inside shelters of law, custom, insurance, political approval, and carefully protected status.

— Mason Cooley

Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.

— Mason Cooley

When love ends, we cry out against destiny. When friendship ends, we cry out against our friend.

— Mason Cooley

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

— Mason Cooley

Loneliness is more likely to lead to fussy housekeeping than to grand views of the Universe.

— Mason Cooley

Self-criticism expands the opportunities for discourse and eliminates the need for an adversary.

— Mason Cooley

Ironic and jittery, we are puzzled by the old heroes with their fighting, boasting, and cocksure lovemaking.

— Mason Cooley

The poor live slow and hard; the rich, fast and easy. The rest of us shuffle along as we may.

— Mason Cooley

One eventually has enough even of oneself.

— Mason Cooley

After sixty, the self-questioning of middle age is obsolete.

— Mason Cooley

Most people find just being themselves not enough of a show.

— Mason Cooley

Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.

— Mason Cooley

The rich are never as possessed by their riches as the poor are by their poverty.

— Mason Cooley

I create my social existence by earning and spending.

— Mason Cooley

Aphorisms know the angles, but not the structure.

— Mason Cooley

Intelligence without power cannibalizes itself.

— Mason Cooley

A blunt statement can be as false as any other.

— Mason Cooley

Antagonistic cooperation is the principle of all markets and many marriages.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

We sometimes find truth, but more often it finds us.

— Mason Cooley

Love sorrows are addictive as other sorrows are not.

— Mason Cooley

Rule of religion: purpose breathes even in dirt and stones.

— Mason Cooley

A sheep who goes looking for a wolf is sure to find one.

— Mason Cooley

Sometimes I dread loneliness more than bores. Other times, the reverse.

— Mason Cooley

Enjoy the insult as you deliver it, before you learn its cost.

— Mason Cooley

Only the most lucid can see their love as comedy.

— Mason Cooley

One who can find lemons sweet and grapes sour is ready for Dame Fortune.

— Mason Cooley

After ages of bombast, the rhetoric of virtue has become ironic and shy.

— Mason Cooley

It is hard to tell truth, and hard not to.

— Mason Cooley

Timidity keeps me safe and sad in a narrow room.

— Mason Cooley

A neurotic can neither enjoy his illusions nor give them up.

— Mason Cooley

The wretchedness of failure is the great attraction of success.

— Mason Cooley