Charles Horton Cooley

To retire to the

To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition. Charles Horton Cooley

One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow. Charles Horton Cooley

The bashful are always

The bashful are always aggressive at heart. Charles Horton Cooley

In most cases a

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of … Read more

When we hate a

When we hate a person, with an intimate, imaginative, human hatred, we enter into his mind, or sympathize — any strong interest will arouse the imagination and create some sort of sympathy. Charles Horton Cooley

The actual God of

The actual God of many Americans… is simply the current of American life. Charles Horton Cooley

Kindliness seems to exist

Kindliness seems to exist primarily as an animal instinct, so deeply rooted that mental degeneracy, which works from the top down,does not destroy it until the mind sinks to the lower grades of idiocy. Charles Horton Cooley

So far as discipline

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational. Charles Horton Cooley

It is surely a

It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. Charles Horton Cooley

It is partly to

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach. Charles Horton Cooley