110+ Mason Cooley Quotes On Culture, Justice And Freedom

Mason Cooley was an American writer and professor of rhetoric. He was known for his aphorisms and wit, and was the author of several books of aphorisms. He was a professor of rhetoric at the City University of New York, and was a contributing editor to The American Scholar. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mason Cooley on culture, justice, freedom.

Top 10 Mason Cooley Quotes

1. Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.
2. When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.
3. Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth
4. The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.
5. Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.
6. The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
7. Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex minus reason
8. Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.
9. City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.
10. Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

Mason Cooley Short Quotes

• Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
• Magic lives in curves, not angles.
• Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
• A goldfish is reason enough for living, if someone needs a reason.
• If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist's office would be full of luminous ideas.
• As every cockroach knows, thriving on poisons is the secret of success.
• I am skeptical in principle, gullible in practice.
• Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.
• Why not - is a slogan for an interesting life.
• Wisdom is founded on memory; happiness on forgetfulness.

Mason Cooley Quotes About Culture

The critic roams through culture, looking for prey. — Mason Cooley

Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious. — Mason Cooley

Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it. — Mason Cooley

Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability. — Mason Cooley

Excrement can never be culturally elaborated to the extent that nutriment can. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Justice

We do justice coldly, injustice hotly. — Mason Cooley

Good deal: justice for you, mercy for me. — Mason Cooley

Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Freedom

Always late: thus I make you the prisoner of my freedom. — Mason Cooley

Our detachments move us toward freedom and death. — Mason Cooley

Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return. — Mason Cooley

Every farewell combines loss and new freedom. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Love

Narcissus weeps to find that his Image does not return his love. — Mason Cooley

You know you're in love when you stop comparing. — Mason Cooley

Lack of reciprocity ruins friendships, but makes love affairs exciting for a time. — Mason Cooley

A frog in love would not be enchanted to learn that her beloved had turned into Prince Charming. — Mason Cooley

Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange. — Mason Cooley

The exhibitionist loves to flirt with shame — Mason Cooley

Moralists love to discourse on the hollowness of success; about the hollowness of failure they are silent. — Mason Cooley

The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit. — Mason Cooley

Love talks and talks. Lust is brief and to the point. — Mason Cooley

Every declaration of love contains an unstated list of exceptions and demands. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Travel

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners. — Mason Cooley

The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life. — Mason Cooley

Travelling, I worry about luggage, prices, and strange food. At home, I am free to broaden my mind by thinking about the higher things. — Mason Cooley

Falling in love is the right adventure for those who dislike sports and travel. — Mason Cooley

Travelling carries me to the surface, away from the deeps of home-thoughts. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Indifference

Withhold admiration from a narcissist and be disliked. Give it and be treated with indifference. — Mason Cooley

Indifference is an excellent substitute for patience. — Mason Cooley

Indifference creates an artificial peace. — Mason Cooley

Ideologies can survive hostility, but not indifference. — Mason Cooley

Looking backward at what has been lost, I feel sad, then indifferent, and at last relieved. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Quotes About Dissolving

Nostalgia keeps dissolving the ironic narratives in which I have contained my past. — Mason Cooley

Irony dissolves sentiment, but occasionally a sentiment is strong enough to dissolve irony. — Mason Cooley

Music dissolves the straight and narrow. — Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley Famous Quotes And Sayings

Forget what hurt you but never forget what it thaught you. — Mason Cooley

Nudity is the costume of lovers and corpses. — Mason Cooley

The critical spirit never knows when to stop meddling. — Mason Cooley

Masturbation is a democratic pleasure, practiced by rich and poor, young and old, married and single. — Mason Cooley

The philosophy of hedonism means little to lovers of pleasure. They have no inclination to read philosophy, or to write it. — Mason Cooley

Telescopes and binoculars endanger the ever-distant sublime. — Mason Cooley

The passion for money is never fickle. — Mason Cooley

Victorian sorrow: the stars are winking in the sky, but not for us. — Mason Cooley

Regret for wasted time is more wasted time — Mason Cooley

The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me. — Mason Cooley

Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations. — Mason Cooley

The language of pornography is abusive, that of romance adoring. Both are addressed to a fetish. — Mason Cooley

Transcendence is something between a metaphor and a miracle. — Mason Cooley

In the theater of confusion, knowing the location of the exits is what counts. — Mason Cooley

The lion cares less about being king of the beasts than about finding his dinner. — Mason Cooley

Mild brown eyes beckon me to the past, but memory provides no clue. — Mason Cooley

Without a little negligence, life would be intolerable. — Mason Cooley

Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation. — Mason Cooley

Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here? — Mason Cooley

Arrogance frowns; pride smiles. — Mason Cooley

Deconstruction glorifies the critic, humiliates the author, and makes the reader wonder why he bothered. — Mason Cooley

The narcissist enjoys being looked at and not looking back. — Mason Cooley

Vanity is easily duped. Ambition, not. — Mason Cooley

People who expect deference resent mere civility. — Mason Cooley

The beloved is the ultimate fetish. — Mason Cooley

In the city, nudity means something; in the wild, it just exists. — Mason Cooley

Swindlers are notoriously gullible. — Mason Cooley

To appear well dressed, be skinny and tall. — Mason Cooley

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another. — Mason Cooley

Self-congratulation pleases only the speaker. — Mason Cooley

Trust, but look for the exits. — Mason Cooley

To avoid taking responsibility, I become unresponsive but hang on until the other person leaves me. — Mason Cooley

Commerce is greedy. Ideology is blood-thirsty. — Mason Cooley

Beggars market their incapacity. — Mason Cooley

A dirty mind is a rich inner resource. — Mason Cooley

Fluency avoids hard thoughts. — Mason Cooley

Fear of trying causes paralysis. Trying causes only trembling and sweating. — Mason Cooley

The little suckings and smackings of the perversions are the sounds of joyous infancy. — Mason Cooley

Imprudence gets us into more trouble than actual misdeeds do. — Mason Cooley

Mistrust makes life difficult. Trust makes it risky. — Mason Cooley

Glamour looks eloquent but seldom talks. — Mason Cooley

Forgetting and remembering are governed by laws, but we cannot find out what they are. — Mason Cooley

Oblivion waits without beckoning or threatening. — Mason Cooley

Sentimentality is the respect the cold-hearted pay to feeling. — Mason Cooley

The negative always wins at last, but I like it none the better for that. — Mason Cooley

Machismo makes no provision for preparing lunch, doing the laundry, or minding the baby. — Mason Cooley

Blackmail is one of the great pastimes of family life. — Mason Cooley

A quick smile is more seductive than a slinky dress. — Mason Cooley

At the end of every diet, the path curves back to the trough. — Mason Cooley

Eccentricity gives misfits a way of fitting in. — Mason Cooley

Mars and Venus are at it again. This time, Hephaestus is standing by with a private detective, a photographer, and a lawyer. — Mason Cooley

Jealousy fuses megalomania and self-abandonment. — Mason Cooley

The squabbles of philandering Zeus and shrewish Hera are the Greeks' comment on married life. — Mason Cooley

The psychiatrist's office: the only place I can be sure my story will be treated as sad, but interesting. — Mason Cooley

Money gives me more energy than all the Granola bars in the world. — Mason Cooley

Giving out crowns to everyone will not make a nation of kings. — Mason Cooley

The telephone gives us the happiness of being together yet safely apart. — Mason Cooley

Rereading, we find a new book. — Mason Cooley

Heroes are born to be troublemakers. — Mason Cooley

Whether I give to a beggar or not, his existence puts me in the wrong. — Mason Cooley

Living alone is good for privacy, bad for full-scale cooking and moving heavy furniture. — Mason Cooley

Malevolence is shameful but satisfying. — Mason Cooley

The great advantage of a new friend is that we have not yet found one another out. — Mason Cooley

Bravery despite defeat is praiseworthy. Victory despite cowardice is beyond praise. — Mason Cooley

Victimization has its privileges, and I want some. — Mason Cooley

When you can't figure out what to do, it's time for a nap. — Mason Cooley

The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong. — Mason Cooley

Fortuna likes to find a crowd and follow it. — Mason Cooley

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential. — Mason Cooley

The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy. — Mason Cooley

Street sign: Ho Hum Road & Easy Street In retirement, I look for days off from my days off. — Mason Cooley

Not romance but companionship makes the happiness of daily life. — Mason Cooley

One's fetishes are fascinating, but not because of their beauty or significance. The same could be said for one's genitals, or one's children. — Mason Cooley

After rejection - misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere. — Mason Cooley

A skyscraper is a boast in glass and steel. — Mason Cooley

Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism. — Mason Cooley

Cynicism has its own zealots. — Mason Cooley

Laughing at our friends, we avenge the disappointment they have caused. — Mason Cooley

Beggars beg to get money, not to reproach the passerby. — Mason Cooley

The Insignificance of Man is a congenial theme; my own insignificance is a sore point. — Mason Cooley

Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them. — Mason Cooley

Life Lessons by Mason Cooley

Mason Cooley believed that life is a journey of self-discovery and that we should take risks to find our true selves. He encouraged us to be open to new experiences and to embrace our own unique identity. He also taught us to be mindful of our actions and to think before we speak, as words can have a lasting impact.