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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
Wall
Overrated
Talent
Beating
Head
Traits
Hole
Perseverance
Holes
Unaccompanied
Likely
Concussion
Produce
Concussions

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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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If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
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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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Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.
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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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An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
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Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
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If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
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It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.
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Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with credit cards.
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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.
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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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Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.
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If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.
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Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
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When we inform, we lead from strength when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.
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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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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.
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Any creed whose basic doctrines do not include respect for the creeds of others, is simply power politics masquerading as philosophy.
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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.
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