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When Science Drove The Gods Out Of Nature, They Took Refuge In Poetry And The Porticos Of Civic Buildings.

-Mason Cooley

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When Science Drove The

Mason Cooley

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When Science Drove The Gods Out Of Nature, They Took Refuge In Poetry And The Porticos Of Civic Buildings.

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Simplicity Is A Strict Taskmaster.

Writing About An Idea Frees Me Of It. Thinking About It Is A Circle Of Repetitions.

Keep Your Lies Short And Simple.

After Sixty, The Self-questioning Of Middle Age Is Obsolete.

Self Questioning

Respectability Is Joining Chastity In The Museum Of Dead Issues.

Every Time I Change The Way I Explain Myself To Myself, I Have To Rearrange The Story Of My Life.

Indifference Creates An Artificial Peace.

The Exhibitionist Loves To Flirt With Shame

Vacations Prove That A Life Of Pleasure Is Overrated.

Young Men Preen. Old Men Scheme.

The Laughter Of The Aphorism Is Sometimes Triumphant, But Seldom Carefree.

My Self-absorption Warms Me; Yours Boils Me.

Self Absorption

When Appearance And Reality Coincide, Philosophy And Literary Criticism Find Themselves With Nothing To Say.

Dutch Painting: Daily Life Is Enough.

Other People's Beliefs May Be Myths, But Not Mine.

People Who Expect Deference Resent Mere Civility.

The Most Reliable Pleasure Afforded By Theater Is The Intermission.

Errors Are More Numerous Than Truths, But Fortunately Too Divided Among Themselves To Take Power.

Pride Sings And Dances; Humility Sighs.

Treat Unhappiness As A Defect And Fewer Would Embrace It.

In Retirement, Only Money And Symptoms Are Consequential.

Opportunity Knocks, But Doesn't Always Answer To Its Name.

The Lion Cares Less About Being King Of The Beasts Than About Finding His Dinner.

It Is Hard To Tell Truth, And Hard Not To.

Literature Gives Us A Memory Of Lives We Did Not Lead.

The Pleasantest Part Of Work Is Having Done It.

Wisdom Is Founded On Memory; Happiness On Forgetfulness.

Leisure Unmasks Our Weaknesses.

Only Those In Comfortable Circumstances Think Love Is The Most Important Thing.

I Feel Disappointed, But I Don't Remember Just What I Expected.

The Party Out Of Office Becomes The Articulate One.

Tears Are Great Peace-makers.

My Mother Wanted To Shrink From My Clinging, But Did Not.

Addicts Turn Their Pleasures Into Vengeful Gods.

Tolerance Is A Placid Contempt.

Money: Power At Its Most Liquid.

Since We Hate The Same People, We Should Be Friends.

In Art, A Dress Is Never Just A Dress; Nor In Life Either.

Sincerity: Willingness To Spend One's Own Money.

Being Enthusiastic Settles Nothing.

Irony Regards Every Simple Truth As A Challenge.

Like An Electric Tea-kettle, Pornography Comes To A Boil Very Fast.

Thought Enables Us To See Fate Coming.

Life Is The Risk We Cannot Refuse.

Reading Civilized The Inner Life.

Mistakes Are The Only Universal Form Of Originality.

Some Loves Are Like A Vice That Has Ceased To Give Pleasure.

Promiscuity Is Like Never Reading Past The First Page. Monogamy Is Like Reading The Same Book Over And Over.

I Am Skeptical In Principle, Gullible In Practice.

Envy Awakens At The Sound Of A Distant Laugh.

After Desolation, Grief Brings Back Our Humanity.

The Puritan Sours His Pleasures By Disguising Them As Duties.

People May Show Jealousy, But Hide Their Envy.

As Children, Our Protests Availed Little. As Adults, The Same.

For Some, Bottles Of Liquor Gleam Like The Towers Of Eldorado.

Life Just Keeps Unfolding, Ignoring Our Praise Or Blame.

Do As You Like--if You Know What It Is.

Retirement Requires The Invention Of A New Hedonism, Not A Return To The Hedonism Of Youth

Mind And Body Obstruct One Another's Pleasures.

I Read Here And There In Books, Enjoying The Examples And Ignoring The Argument.

Courage, Determination, And Hard Work Are All Very Nice, But Not So Nice As An Oil Well In The Back Yard.

Creativity Makes A Leap, Then Looks To See Where It Is.

Dogs Often Remind Us Of The Human, Ail-too Human. Cats, Never.

Victimization Has Its Privileges, And I Want Some.

A Blocked Path Also Offers Guidance.

The Familiar Changes As We Cling To It.

Good Parties Create A Temporary Youthfulness.

Sexual Attraction Keeps Throwing Self-interest Off Course.

My Father Liked To Moralize, And So Do I. But He Was In Earnest, While I Am Embarrassed And Pretend That I Am Merely Being Witty.

My Neglected Duties Crowd Around Me In My Dreams, Murmuring.

Think Carefully Before Asking For Justice. Mercy Might Be Safer.

As A Comforter, Philosophy Cannot Compete With A Good Dinner.

The Olympian Gods Cannot Have Grand Passions Because They Cannot Die.

When Money Disappears, We Soon Understand The Power Of Absence.

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.

As A Dream Comes True, It Falls Flat.

Dreams Come True

If We Think About The Obvious Long Enough, It Dissolves.

Cynicism Formulates Issues Clearly, But Only To Dismiss Them.

The Public Is A Hibernating Bear, Hard To Awaken And Fond Of Honey.

The Ninety Percent Of Human Experience That Does Not Fit Into Established Narrative Patterns Falls Into Oblivion.

In The Present Age, A Man With Harmonious Ideas Is Regarded As Out Of Touch.

Robert Frost: Plain, Strong, Simple, And Mean.

Explanations Comfort Us By Giving The Impression That There Is An Order In Things.

If You Call Failures Experiments, You Can Put Them In Your Resume And Claim Them As Achievements.

Observe Decorum, And It Will Open A Path To Morality.

The Lonely Become Either Thoughtful Or Empty.

Discontented Women Dream Of Being Rescued By Prince Charming. Discontented Men Dream Of Finding A Horny Blond In The Back Seat Ofa Taxi.

When A Modest Man Praises Himself, People Listen.

Curiosity Makes Loneliness.

To Understand A Literary Style, Consider What It Omits.

Reading Gives Us Someplace To Go When We Have To Stay Where We Are.

People Are Not The Way They Are Primarily In Order To Annoy Me.

You Are As Happy As You Think You Are, But Not Necessarily As Miserable As You Imagine.

I Feel Affluent Or Not According To What Part Of Town I Am In.

There Are Different Rules For Reading, For Thinking, And For Talking. Writing Blends All Three Of Them.

I Am Kept In Bondage By The Moles Of My Beloved.

Art Seduces, But Does Not Exploit.

Forgiveness Is Like Faith. You Have To Keep Reviving It.

Forgive And Move On

What Is Forgiveness

Power Makes Gods. Virtue Makes Martyrs.

If You Do Not Throw In A Few Promises Of Better Things To Come, Gloomy One, I Am Going To Take You Back To The Library.

Our Punning Minds Rejoin What Logic Has Separated.

Love Talks And Talks. Lust Is Brief And To The Point.

Glamour Looks Eloquent But Seldom Talks.

Imagination Awakens Ambition, Then Causes It To Lose Its Way.

I Like What I Do For A Living. I Also Like Not Doing It--perhaps Even More.

Later Is Always My First Choice.

Procrastination

If We Knew Enough, Fortune Would Turn Out To Be Nature.

Thrift Is An Attractive Idea Until You Get Down To Specifics.

We Sometimes Find Truth, But More Often It Finds Us.

Thoughts Can Be Revised. Deeds Cannot.

After An Argument, Silence May Mean Acceptance Or The Continuation Of Resistance By Other Means.

Sulking Is Silent Because Speaking Would Reveal Its Folly.

The Modest Youth Somehow Knows Just What To Do For The Cameras.

In New York, Pretending To Be Above The Struggle Means No Seat On The Bus And A Table Next To The Kitchen.

Placing The Extraordinary At The Center Of The Ordinary, As Realism Does, Is A Great Comfort To Us Stay-at-homes.

Habit Keeps My Life Going, With Occasional Pushes From Desire.

Beware Of Wallflowers. They Expect To Have Everything Done For Them.

Failures Are Easier To Repeat Than Successes.

To A Suicide: You Just Poisoned The Wrong Person.

Many Think That Assigning Blame Settles Matters.

The Parade Was Here, But It Disappeared Around A Corner.

Reputation Runs Behind The Current State Of Affairs.

Vanity Well Fed Is Benevolent. Vanity Hungry Is Spiteful.

Imprudence Gets Us Into More Trouble Than Actual Misdeeds Do.

Modernized By Tin Roofs And T-shirts, Third World Poverty Is No Longer Picturesque.

Our Public Monuments Are Memorials To The Enlightenment.

Snarls And Sobs Show That A Love Affair Is Getting Serious.

A Restaurant With Candles And Flowers Evokes More Reveries Than The Isle Of Bali Does.

Money Gives Me More Energy Than All The Granola Bars In The World.

After Ages Of Bombast, The Rhetoric Of Virtue Has Become Ironic And Shy.

Jokes Are Unanswerable Objections.

A Fastidious Taste Is Best Indoors, Away From Nature And The City.

When You Can't Figure Out What To Do, It's Time For A Nap.

Whatever Is Spoken Of Acquires A Certain Existence.

Full Of Troubles, The Mind Is Still The Only Garden Of Delight.

Confess To The Misdeeds You Cannot Hide.

Flattery Has To Overcome My Mistrust, And It Does.

Aphorisms Know The Angles, But Not The Structure.

If Success Is A Habit, It Is A Hard One To Acquire.

Congratulations

Victory Brings Obliviousness; Defeat, Attentiveness.

Sacred Texts Always Offend Reason.

To Avoid Discord, Never Put Two Wise People In The Same Room.

Existence Is Not A Mystery Unless You Think It Has A Meaning.

To Be Thoroughly Modern, An Aphorism Should Trail Off Vaguely Rather Than Coming To A Point.

Dancers Dance Through Their Pain I Shrink From Mine.

Fruitless Striving Breeds Less Despair Than Inaction.

The Intimacy Of Love Absolves Us Of Our Guilty Separateness.

Mathematics: Silent Harmonies. Music: Sounding Numbers.

Violence Stops Thought. Hence Its Popularity As A Pain-killer.

Swindlers Are Notoriously Gullible.

The Young Break Rules For Fun. The Old For Profit.

Health Can Be Squandered, But Not Stored Up.

Clouds Of Flavors And Savors Float Around The Thing-in-itself.

Life Is What It Makes You.

When I Try To Portray To Myself My Heart's Desire, Nothing Happens.

The Sage Belongs To The Same Obsolete Repertory As The Virtuous Maiden And The Enlightened Monarch.

Promiscuity Turns Sex Into A Sport, Like Arm-wrestling.

Inevitably, Almost Everything We Say Is Either Quotation Or Paraphrase.

Totem Poles And Wooden Masks No Longer Suggest Tribal Villages But Fashionable Drawing Rooms In New York And Paris.

The Ancient Mariner Seizes The Guest At The Wedding Feast And Will Not Let Go Until He Has Told All His Story: The Prototype Of The Bore.

The Limitations Of Pleasure Cannot Be Overcome By More Pleasure.

Children Enjoy Inflicting Pain Until Unhappiness Teaches Them Tenderness.

Plato's Symposium Shows That Flirtation And Philosophy Can Further One Another.

Reading A Great Book Causes Jolts And Frights.

The Writer Considers Sayability Before Anything Else.

The Doctrine Of The Immortality Of The Soul Has More Threat Than Comfort.

Innovation Violates Tradition--attacks It In Public And Steals From It In Private.

A Theology Whose God Is A Metaphor Is Wasting Its Time.

Procrastination Makes Easy Things Hard, Hard Things Harder.

Procrastination

Lechery Is Secretive, But Must Finally Reveal Itself To At Least One.

Alcohol Postpones Anxiety, Then Multiplies It.

I Resist Change Even As I Call For It.

Happiness Is Often Hard-hearted.

Aimless Drifting Also Fulfills An Intention.

Romantics Consider Common Sense Vulgar.

To Be Successful Be Ahead Of Your Time, But Only A Little.

Winning Means Outlasting Everyone Else.

One Who Can Find Lemons Sweet And Grapes Sour Is Ready For Dame Fortune.

Sometimes "yes" Is Rhetoric Enough.

To Appear Well Dressed, Be Skinny And Tall.

Denial Of One Appetite Sharpens The Others.

To Gain A Reputation For Virtue, Grieve Over Those You Injure.

Guilt Stirs Me, But Only To Self-pity.

Lies Save Trouble Now, But May Return In Thunder And Lightning.

I Keep Renaming My Motives, But Continue Doing The Same Things.

Wisdom Knows When To Return Death's Embrace.

The Modernist Writers Found Despair Inspirational.

Pornography Supplies The Only Really Safe Sex.

Alone, I Am Satisfied With Myself. With Others, I Am Beset By Troubling Comparisons.

Failure Makes Us Envious. Success Makes Us Greedy.

Children Consider Disliking Their Parents Natural, But If The Dislike Is Returned, They Are Outraged.

Youth Demands More Than Ordinary Life. Age Clings To It.

Astrology: Do We Make A Hullabaloo Among The Stars, Or Do They Make A Hullabaloo Down Here?

Nudity Is The Costume Of Lovers And Corpses.

Good Deal: Justice For You, Mercy For Me.

Authority Is Conferred By Position, Not Character.

Paradox Implies That Stating A Contradiction Disposes Of It.

At Retirement, Switching From "i Must" To "i Want" Leaves Me Puzzled And Uneasy.

Since Events Are Not Metaphors, The Literal-minded Have A Certain Advantage In Dealing With Them.

Jealousy Fuses Megalomania And Self-abandonment.

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