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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

And to assert defensively at the outset that he is happily married, the father of four children and the one-time adornment of his college boxing, track and tennis teams.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Assert Children Defensively Terms Track
This is a lesson mankind has not yet learned. We identify, and stratify, and treat persons largely on the basis of their accidental (physical) characteristics, which have no deeper meaning.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Characteristics Lessons Treats
The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Enemy Progress Stagnation
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
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Atrocities Greater Warfare
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
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Fear Lessons Past
Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Men Unique War
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 greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Creative Educational Taught
Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Dangerous Ignorance Nearly
We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Pain Suffering Withdrawal
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
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
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Compassion Judging Justice
By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Advice Generally Men Mind

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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