Inspiring Quotes by Mason Cooley - Page 3

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"The wisdom of age: don't stop walking"

"Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts"

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

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

"While there's life, there's fear"

"Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love"

"Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy"

"Even boredom has its crises"

"Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking"

"The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch"

"The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds"

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

"In every death, a busy world comes to an end"

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

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

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

"Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss"

"Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness"

"The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head"

"The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind"

"The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul"

"Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs"

"Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over"

"Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them"

"Many gloat over their own troubles"

"Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology"

"Kafka: Cries of Helplessness in Twenty Powerful Volumes"

"If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether"

"Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it"

"Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred"

"Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life"

"Cure for an obsession: get another one"

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

"Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables"

"When sages commend excess, desire is sick"

"Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris"

"Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer"

"The gods are watching, but idly, yawning"

"Rereading, we find a new book"

"Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name"

"My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures"

"Money: power at its most liquid"

"Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth"

"In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners"

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

"In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words"

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

"Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs"

"Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead"

"Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it"

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