Mason Cooley

The parade was here, but it disappeared around a corner.

— Mason Cooley

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

— Mason Cooley

Vanity well fed is benevolent. Vanity hungry is spiteful.

— Mason Cooley

Beware of wallflowers. They expect to have everything done for them.

— Mason Cooley

Since we hate the same people, we should be friends.

— Mason Cooley

Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment.

— Mason Cooley

The flesh of past lovers looks both familiar and strange.

— Mason Cooley

Dreams surround our desires with ugliness and dread.

— Mason Cooley

My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.

— Mason Cooley

New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject--art, money, sex, food, health.

— Mason Cooley

Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.

— Mason Cooley

The worship of Mammon may be vulgar or immoral, but it persists while other religions falter and disappear.

— Mason Cooley

I was used to yearning for you. After you returned my love, I felt unsettled and vaguely aggrieved.

— Mason Cooley

Think of the many different relations of form and content. E.g., the many pairs of trousers and what's in them.

— Mason Cooley

Between repetition and forgetting, it is a marvel that a new thought ever struggles into existence.

— Mason Cooley

If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.

— Mason Cooley

I am too impatient to wait for temptation to come to me.

— Mason Cooley

If you corner me, you are going to hear some unwelcome truths.

— Mason Cooley

A critic who uses new quotations is making important changes.

— Mason Cooley

Joy goes as deep as sorrow, but leaves less of itself behind.

— Mason Cooley

The desire to create literature leads to frights, grunts, and coy looks.

— Mason Cooley

Documents create a paper reality we call proof.

— Mason Cooley

Smiling half-reluctance seems to promise more than the frankest gesture of desire.

— Mason Cooley

Getting ready: the show girl scratches her breast and shakes out her feathers.

— Mason Cooley

Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.

— Mason Cooley

Saying I feel guilty is a mere form of words. Saying I feel ashamed is not.

— Mason Cooley

The extravagance of intellect outstrips the extravagance of desire.

— Mason Cooley

The aphorism wants to be at the same time both main line and off beat.

— Mason Cooley

Middle-aged adolescents are a libel on the real thing.

— Mason Cooley

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

— Mason Cooley

To avoid doing anything, wait for the right circumstances.

— Mason Cooley

Reversing a proposition rearranges its terms, but still keeps out new terms.

— Mason Cooley

Modern pictures banish depiction for interfering with the workings of paint.

— Mason Cooley

The villain may be good looking, but his smile is never quite right.

— Mason Cooley

The muse is blind as Cupid and skittish as Diana.

— Mason Cooley

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential.

— Mason Cooley

The real reality is always just around the corner.

— Mason Cooley

With age, comfort becomes more seductive than beauty.

— Mason Cooley

Many pains are imaginary, but all joys are real.

— Mason Cooley

Worrying is as futile as boredom, but harder work.

— Mason Cooley