The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
SYDNEY J. HARRISThe severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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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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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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There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
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There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
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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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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.
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A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
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Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.
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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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Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
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Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
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The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
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Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.
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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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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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Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
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We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
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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.
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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.
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The loner may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself.
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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.
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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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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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Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
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The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
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If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
SYDNEY J. HARRIS