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. HARRISRegret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
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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.
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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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A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.
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We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
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When we have “second thoughts” about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
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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.” —
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The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.
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Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
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Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
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Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS