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The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.

Sydney J. Harris

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
Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Enemy Lovers Time Love
The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discomfort Middle Partisan
A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Forgiveness Forgiving Loser
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Inspirational Love Motivational
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
Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Coats Looks Men
Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Belief Dogmatic Reason Structure
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, but the perpetual human predicament is that the answer soon poses its own problems.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Answers Predicaments Problem
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
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Education Parenting Responsibility
Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Dangerous Ignorance Nearly
It’s odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which “I” is capitalized; in many other languages “You” is capitalized and the “i” is lower case.” —
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

English Facts Language Littles Unsetting
And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Independent
Many married couples separate because they quarrel incessantly, but just as many separate because they were never honest enough or courageous enough to quarrel when they should have.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Couple Couples Divorce Quarrel Separate
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

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.

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The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.

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Popular Authors

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