Mason Cooley People Quotations

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.

City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.

Lonely people keep up a ceaseless flow of commentary on themselves.

People who expect deference resent mere civility.

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

Listening to people keeps them entertained.

Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

Inconsistency has been overpraised by people who do not expect to suffer from it.

Holding unconventional opinions makes people feel they have strong characters.

Self-pity makes people callous.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

I am often attracted to people with whom I could not hold a five minute conversation.

Most people see no reason to stop arguing just because an issue has been decided.

People are reluctant to cite boredom as grounds for divorce.

People often imagine that being hard to please confers a certain superiority.

Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.

People are not the way they are primarily in order to annoy me.

Self-satisfaction and self-pity are both condemned. What are people permitted to feel about themselves?

The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

The trouble with the young people today is that it is they who are young.

People invent gods to explain their suffering.

The past goes right on pulling me apart, though I can scarcely remember the people or the issues.

People often are unsure whether or not they are in love, but they generally know whether or not they are having sex.

Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

Since we hate the same people, we should be friends.

Beautiful people are forgiven more often than the rest.

Listen to what people say about themselves; they will tell you everything you need to know.

Most people find just being themselves not enough of a show.

People may show jealousy, but hide their envy.

Sexual attraction pairs people, but does not match them.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.

Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them.

Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger.

Alone, lonely people talk to themselves. In company, they often continue.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

Prudence does not make people happy; it merely deprives them of the excitement of being constantly in trouble.

When a modest man praises himself, people listen.

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.