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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.

Sydney J. Harris

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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Head
Traits
Hole
Perseverance
Holes
Unaccompanied
Likely
Concussion
Produce
Concussions
Wall
Overrated
Talent
Beating

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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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Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.
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This is a lesson mankind has not yet learned. We identify, and stratify, and treat persons largely on the basis of their accidental (physical) characteristics, which have no deeper meaning.
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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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There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
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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.
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The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good. This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.
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A truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future.
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Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy.
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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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A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
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Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?
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We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'
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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.
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Being yourself is not remaining what you were, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure and far from the goal.
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The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.
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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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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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We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.
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Why do so many people yearn for an eternal life when they don't even know what to do with themselves in this brief one?
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