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Frivolous sorrow is folly. Frivolous enjoyment is not.

Mason Cooley

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Mason Cooley
Age: 75 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 1
Died: 2002
Died: July 25
Aphorist
Joy
Frivolous
Folly
Enjoyment
Sorrow

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Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.
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In New York, pretending to be above the struggle means no seat on the bus and a table next to the kitchen.
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Bored by safety, the lover grows jealous and exacting.
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Sometimes the given seems like something taken away.
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If there is no harm in asking, why guilt and fear when we do so?
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The writer is always courted by invitations from the all-too- familiar.
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Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac.
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A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.
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The aphorism: a platitude that swerves, or slides all the way around.
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Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.
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Self-criticism expands the opportunities for discourse and eliminates the need for an adversary.
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Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
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The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.
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Since events are not metaphors, the literal-minded have a certain advantage in dealing with them.
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A: Everything changes. B: But not enough.
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No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
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Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.
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Creativity is not a substitute for competence.
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I seldom remember my father, but I sneeze and rub my nose the way he did. I also love my son with grief and anger, as he did.
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Helplessness is a mighty power.
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