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Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.

Sydney J. Harris

Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Minorities People Psychics
Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Hard People Play Work
The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light – and the next tunnel.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Light Next Optimist Tunnels
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
Time is love, above all else. It is the most precious commodity in the world and should be lavished on those we care most about.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Care Commodity Precious Time World
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Education Mirror Purpose Whole Window
Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Imagination Imagine World
It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Believe Insanity Mean
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
A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living; it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon one’s resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination; how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discipline Learning Life
Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Anyone Else Most Stranger
Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Keeping Promises Summer Winter
What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Believe Boys Parent
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
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Change Funny Love
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Mediocrity Merit

Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.

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Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.

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