Mason Cooley

Here’s a profile of Mason Cooley, along with a selection of his memorable quotes and reflections:

Biography

• Name: Mason Cooley

• Born: 1927

• Died: July 25, 2002

• Nationality: American

• Profession: Aphorist, literary academic

Academic Career & Life

• Cooley taught French, world literature, and speech. He was long associated with the College of Staten Island (CUNY).

• He previously served as an assistant professor of English at Columbia University from 1959 to 1967, and later as an adjunct professor (1980–1988).

• He earned his B.A. from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. from Oxford.

Cooley was not known for grand public spectacles, but rather for quietly crafting pithy, polished observations that distilled insight into very few words.

Style, Themes & Legacy

• Cooley’s preferred form was the aphorism — short, sharp, often paradoxical statements about life, literature, time, human nature, and the mind.

• He is often grouped with classical moralists and aphorists (such as Pascal, La Rochefoucauld) for his clarity and conciseness.

• His collections City Aphorisms (spanning several “Selections”) represent how he married urban experience with introspective thought.

• Many of his lines circulate widely in quotation anthologies, calendars, and online, giving him a kind of posthumous presence beyond his academic sphere.

Because he often published small collections or anthologized selections of aphorisms rather than long works, his reputation is built on distilled wisdom rather than narrative or treatise.

Selected Quotes

Below are several well-known lines by Mason Cooley. Each carries his characteristic mix of irony, insight, and compact phrasing:

• “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”

• “The time I kill is killing me.”

• “Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.”

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

• “Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.”

• “Wisdom remembers. Happiness forgets.”

• “In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth.”

• “Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.”

• “I am easy-going right up to the borders of my self-interest.”

• “The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.”

These lines reflect his focus on human nature, irony, skepticism, self-awareness, and the tension between private thought and public life.