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Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

Sydney J. Harris

The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Dislike Someone Independence Independent
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
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
Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Educated Looks People
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Mediocrity Merit
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
There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

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

Brain Knowledge One Small
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
Many people feel “guilty” about things they shouldn’t feel guilty about, in order to shut out feelings of guilt about things they should feel guilty about.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Feelings Order People
All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Achievement Failure Risk
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
Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Morning Staring Typewriters
Every rule in the book can be broken, except one – be who you are, and become all you were meant to be.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Book Broken Effectiveness
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Funny Time Witty
It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Confidence Relationship Self Esteem
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
If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Endure Terrible
Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Attain Honesty Lying Maturity Truth
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
A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Consider Experts Growth
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
There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Democracy Republican Voting
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
Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discovery Tools Truth
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Able Possession Renounce
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

Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

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Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

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