Mason Cooley (1927 – July 25, 2002) was an American aphorist known for his witty aphorisms. One of these such aphorisms Cooley developed was "The time I kill is killing me."
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
Jargon is part ceremonial robe, part false beard.
Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.
I am most drawn to writing when I have something else urgent to do.
Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.
To be fulfilled, a prophecy needs lots of flexibility.
Life is what it makes you.
Under attack, sentiments harden into dogma.
Natural Man, in our current version, is a disgruntled adolescent.
Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?
I answered my father's demands for sympathy with silence.
Sensuality takes planning and work.
Jealousy is inconsolable because it cannot know the beloved
I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs.
Never lie in writing.
A sentimental aphorism is even more a surprise than a hard- boiled sonnet.
The closeups of pornography make human genitals look like undiscovered prehistoric animals.
The past goes right on pulling me apart, though I can scarcely remember the people or the issues.
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
Methodology gives those with no ideas something to do.