Sydney J. Harris quotes - page 5

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are. (Sydney J. Harris)
We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. 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. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure; and we learn too late in life that our acts of deception are irrevocable - they may be forgiven, but they cannot be forgotten by their victims. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning person until they learned whether that person fell in through his or her own fault or not. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
If you want to know what a man's character is really like... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires - for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, "You Only Live Once." View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals. (Sydney J. Harris)
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. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
As the horsepower in modern automobiles steadily rises, the congestion of traffic steadily lowers the average possible speed of your car. This is known as Progress. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
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. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us. (Sydney J. Harris)
As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood -- and an almost total inability to practice it. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions. View quote
Sydney J. Harris
Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos. View quote
Sydney J. Harris