Mason Cooley

“Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.”

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

“Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.”

“The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.”

“If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.”

“Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.”

“Romantics consider common sense vulgar.”

“Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.”

“Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.”

“My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.”

“In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.”

“Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.”

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

“Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.”

“My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.”

“The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.”

“After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.”

“Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.”

“As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.”

“The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.”