Top 1384 Quotes & Sayings by Mason Cooley - Page 21
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Mason Cooley.
Last updated on April 21, 2025.
Music dissolves the straight and narrow.
In the theater of confusion, knowing the location of the exits is what counts.
Most people find just being themselves not enough of a show.
The sacred is found boring by many who find the uncanny fascinating.
A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.
Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac.
Title deeds generally outlast poems.
Thought enables us to see Fate coming.
Beautiful people are forgiven more often than the rest.
When poets go off the boil, they sound like bumble bees; when critics do, they sound like sewing machines.
The worship of Mammon may be vulgar or immoral, but it persists while other religions falter and disappear.
No matter how close thought sticks to the actual, it follows its own rules.
Understanding replaces imaginary fears with real ones.
To avoid discord, never put two wise people in the same room.
Only death goes deeper than sex.
Mathematics: silent harmonies. Music: sounding numbers.
Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter.
Life is always rich, thought only occasionally so.
Listen to what people say about themselves; they will tell you everything you need to know.
Good advice is never as helpful as an interest-free loan.
Beauty compels us; reason merely cajoles.
In the great cities, winter glitters with art and feasting. But poetry, the country cousin, sees only the dearth of the fields.
Travelling carries me to the surface, away from the deeps of home-thoughts.
The harp is an insipid instrument--no good for dancing, feasting, or marching, only for sitting primly in a parlor or on a cloud.
Thought maps existence; fantasy colors it.
Rule of religion: purpose breathes even in dirt and stones.
I feel that I have something significant to say, but I cannot think what it is.
A small boy puts his hand on the wall, and looks down intently as he wriggles his toes. The birth of thought?
Abyss-mongering makes professors and poets feel daring.
Every life has a love story, even though the beloved may be imaginary, or a cat.
To make a thought my own, I must think it often.
Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.
Beauty and virtue: the most kissable ass in the world is no guarantee of good intentions.
You are as happy as you think you are, but not necessarily as miserable as you imagine.
The imaginary audience for my life is growing small and silent.
Prudence suspects that happiness is a bait set by risk.
Wisdom knows when to return death's embrace.
With age, the mind grows slower and more wily.
The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.
Growth provides novel experiences for youth; decay the same, alas, for age.
I am now old enough to make common cause with my predecessors against my successors.
With age, comfort becomes more seductive than beauty.
I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs.
At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.
Wisdom has lost repute because it so often applies to a state of affairs that no longer exists.
The noisy vacancy of youth, the quiet vacancy of age.
As the tenor roars his passion, I think sadly of my spreading middle, and his.
After sixty, the self-questioning of middle age is obsolete.
Pleasure usually comes when called, but not happiness.
Happiness is often hard-hearted.
Cheerfulness is a policy; happiness is a talent.
My mentors grow old and foolish. I am afraid.
The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds.
Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.
Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.
Youth demands more than ordinary life. Age clings to it.
Everyone knows that (1) happiness is the goal of life, and (2) happiness is a chimera.
As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age.
With decrepitude, longevity has overshot the mark.
The supposed unhappiness of the rich is always a cheerful topic of conversation.
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