Mason Cooley Quotes

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

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

A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.

Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.

Few artists can afford artistic temperament.

Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

Folly always knows the answer.

For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.

Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.

Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.

General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.

Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.

Hatred observes with more care than love does.

Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother's hatred still comes as a surprise.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.