Mason Cooley

Civilization creates discontents; barbarism creates quick endings.

— Mason Cooley

Learned researches lead to headaches, constipation, and befuddled quarreling.

— Mason Cooley

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does.

— Mason Cooley

In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.

— Mason Cooley

If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

— Mason Cooley

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

— Mason Cooley

Wallace Stevens: the Platonist celebrates endless change, but with regret.

— Mason Cooley

My neglected duties crowd around me in my dreams, murmuring.

— Mason Cooley

Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger.

— Mason Cooley

A suburb is an attempt to get out of reach of the city without having the city be out of reach.

— Mason Cooley

The pointless ferocities of intellectual life shock businessmen, who kill only to eat.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

If you do not throw in a few promises of better things to come, gloomy one, I am going to take you…

— Mason Cooley

Never trust the judgment of an enthusiastic man; never trust the promises of a lazy one.

— Mason Cooley

Pleasing illusion: if my childhood had been the Paradise it should have been, all would now be well.

— Mason Cooley

Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.

— Mason Cooley

Clothes make the body both mysterious and historical.

— Mason Cooley

Holding unconventional opinions makes people feel they have strong characters.

— Mason Cooley

Age must give way to youth, no doubt. But not yet, not yet.

— Mason Cooley

Cruel impulses stir all about my kindly heart.

— Mason Cooley

Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

— Mason Cooley

Reclusive? The inner city will secure your privacy better than any desert cave.

— Mason Cooley

I enjoy my rights, but I revel in my privileges.

— Mason Cooley

The eye deals with excess more easily than the stomach does.

— Mason Cooley

When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.

— Mason Cooley

If your nose is up in the air, you cannot see where you are going.

— Mason Cooley

My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

— Mason Cooley

No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.

— Mason Cooley

The idealist regards facts as provisional.

— Mason Cooley

Somehow the body keeps life going despite the ravaging negations of the mind.

— Mason Cooley

Unhappiness is too common to call for special measures.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

— Mason Cooley

Literature may be false, but it is not trivial.

— Mason Cooley

Lead the reader toward the thought, then stop a little short.

— Mason Cooley

People are reluctant to cite boredom as grounds for divorce.

— Mason Cooley

The noisy vacancy of youth, the quiet vacancy of age.

— Mason Cooley

To appear well dressed, be skinny and tall.

— Mason Cooley

Something is sticking out its tongue at me from the corner of my mirror.

— Mason Cooley

Beautiful people are forgiven more often than the rest.

— Mason Cooley