Writer · American · 214 quotes
Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.
Mason Cooley
Writer · American
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.
Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.
Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.
Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.
The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.
What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.
No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
The man in the street is always a stranger.
Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.
If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.
Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.
When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.
Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.
Self-reform is the only kind that works.
Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.
We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
