Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
– Mason Cooley
Love talks and talks. Lust is brief and to the point.
– Mason Cooley
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
– Mason Cooley
Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.
– Mason Cooley
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
– Mason Cooley
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
– Mason Cooley
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
– Mason Cooley
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
– Mason Cooley
Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.
– Mason Cooley
No dignity without distance.
– Mason Cooley
I may forget my dignity, but you may not.
– Mason Cooley
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
– Mason Cooley
Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it.
– Mason Cooley
A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.
– Mason Cooley
After rejection – misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere.
– Mason Cooley
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
– Mason Cooley
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
– Mason Cooley
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
– Mason Cooley
Vacations prove that a life of pleasure is overrated.
– Mason Cooley
Suspense combines curiosity with fear and pulls them up a rising slope.
– Mason Cooley
Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.
– Mason Cooley
Faith moves mountains but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
– Mason Cooley
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.
– Mason Cooley
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
– Mason Cooley
The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.
– Mason Cooley
Sometimes I discover I have changed my mind because I have forgotten what I used to think.
– Mason Cooley
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
– Mason Cooley
When you can’t figure out what to do, it’s time for a nap.
– Mason Cooley
Dignity takes alarm at the unexpected sound of laughter.
– Mason Cooley
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
– Mason Cooley
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
– Mason Cooley
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
– Mason Cooley
Intelligence makes sincerity difficult.
– Mason Cooley
Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions.
– Mason Cooley
If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.
– Mason Cooley
Laughter scares off lust.
– Mason Cooley
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
– Mason Cooley
When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.
– Mason Cooley
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
– Mason Cooley