90 Quotes by Charles Horton Cooley

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.

To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.

To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.