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Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’

Sydney J. Harris

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Brain Knowledge One Small
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discovery Ethics Philosophy
Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one’s own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you-either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Art Choices Squares
We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Fear Ourselves Person Someone Younger
People decline invitations when they are “indisposed” physically, and I wish they would do likewise when they feel indisposed emotionally. A person has no more right to attend a party with a head full of venom than with a throat full of virus.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Imposed Party People Physically Wish
No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Men Philosophy
The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Enemy Progress Stagnation
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Confusing Teacher Teaching
The loner may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Loner May Solitude
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Mediocrity Merit
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Ideas Men Thinking
A ‘penchant for telling the truth’ can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor’s wife.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Chance Telling Truth Wife
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Compassion Judging Justice
And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Core Evoke Only Person Resonate
Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Answers Simple Wonder
The public examination of homosexuality in our contemporary life is still so coated with distasteful moral connotations that even a reviewer is bound to wonder uneasily why he was selected to evaluate a book on the subject.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Coated Examination Father Review Team

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’

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Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’

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