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Mason Cooley [1927-2002] American

Rank: 101
Writer

Mason Cooley was an American aphorist known for his witty aphorisms. One of these such aphorisms Cooley developed was "The time I kill is killing me."
He was professor emeritus of French, speech and world literature at the College of Staten Island.

Faith, Pet, Wisdom, Age, Alone, Forgiveness, Imagination, Money, Change, Courage, Equality, Failure, Friendship, Funny, Happiness, Health, History, Hope, Humor, Love, Moving On, Nature, New Year's, Power, Romantic, Society, Time, Travel, Truth

Quote	Tags	Rank
Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.	Love, Moving On, Truth	101
Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.	Pet	102
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.		103
Cure for an obsession: get another one.	Funny	104
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.		105
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.	Health, Money	106
In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.		107
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.	History, Nature	108
The time I kill is killing me.	Time	109
Money: power at its most liquid.	Money, Power	110
Never try to leap from a standstill.		111
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.		112
Romantics consider common sense vulgar.		113
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.		114
Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.		115
The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.	Alone	116
Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.		117
Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.	New Year's	118
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.		119
I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.		120
A blocked path also offers guidance.		121
Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.		122
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.		123
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.	Travel	124
Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.		125
Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.		126
Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.		201
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.	Pet	202
Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.	Alone	203
Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.	Courage, Hope	204
Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name.		205
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.	Society	206
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.		207
'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'		208
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.		209
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?		210
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.	Change	211
The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.		212
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.		213
Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.	Romantic	214
Women encourage men to be childish, then scold them.		215
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.		216
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.		217
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.		218
The body has a mind of its own.		219
The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.	Age	220
In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.		221
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.		222
If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.		223
A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.		224
Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.	Age	225
Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.		226
An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.		301
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.		302
Rereading, we find a new book.		303
Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.		304
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.		305
General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.		306
My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.		307
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.		308
Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.	Happiness	309
If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.	Wisdom	310
Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.		311
Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.		312
My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.		313
Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.		314
Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.	Faith, Forgiveness	315
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.		316
City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.		317
Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.		318
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.		319
For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.		320
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.		321
The real secrets are not the ones I tell.		322
I'm being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.		323
It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.		324
Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.	Faith, Friendship	325
Young men preen. Old men scheme.		326
The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.		401
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.		402
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.		403
Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.		404
As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.	Equality	405
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.		406
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.		407
Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?		408
I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.		409
Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.		410
If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.		411
Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.		412
No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.		413
The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.	Wisdom	414
The beloved is the ultimate fetish.		415
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.	Imagination	416
Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.	Imagination	417
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.		418
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.		419
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.	Wisdom	420
Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.		421
Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.		422
The passion for money is never fickle.		423
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.		424
A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.		425
Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.		426
Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.		501
Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.		502
The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.		503
Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.		504
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.	Faith	505
Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.		506
When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.		507
Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.		508
After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.		509
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.		510
Hatred observes with more care than love does.		511
Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.		512
Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother's hatred still comes as a surprise.		513
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.	Humor	514
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.		515
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.		516
Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.		517
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.		518
Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.		519
Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.		520
To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.		521
Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.		522
People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.		523
In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.		524
The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.		525
Fears and lies intensify consciousness.		526
Many gloat over their own troubles.		601
Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.		602
Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.		603
A blunt statement can be as false as any other.		604
Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.		605
Old and young disbelieve one another's truths.		606
If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.		607
Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.		608
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.		609
While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.		610
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.		611
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.		612
Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.		613
When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.		614
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.		615
A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.		616
Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.		617
Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.		618
Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?		619
Listening to people keeps them entertained.		620
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.		621
Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.		622
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.		623
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.		624
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.		625
The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.		626
The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.		701
Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.		702
Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.		703
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.		704
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.		705
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.		706
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.		707
The only peace is being out of earshot.		708
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.		709
The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.		710
While there's life, there's fear.		711
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.		712
I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.	Failure	713
We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.		714
Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.		715
I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.		716
Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.		717
Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.		718
Even boredom has its crises.		719
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.		720
Art seduces, but does not exploit.		721
The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.		722
Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.		723
Folly always knows the answer.		724
Never ask a bore a question.		725
Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.		726
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.		801
If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.		802
Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.		803
If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.		804
If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.		805
Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.		806
To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.	Forgiveness	807
Self-reform is the only kind that works.		808
If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.		809
Malice is always authentic and sincere.		810
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.		811
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.		812
Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.		813
My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.		814
Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen.		815
Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.		816
When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.		817
Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.		818
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.		819
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.		820
Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.		821
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.		822
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.		823
The man in the street is always a stranger.		824
People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.		825
Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.		826
Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.		901
I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.		902
Even cats grow lonely and anxious.	Pet	903
To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.		904
In every death, a busy world comes to an end.		905

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