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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.

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
Cannot
Acts
May
Measure
Never
Victim
Irrevocable
Life
Forgotten
Restored
Confidence
Betrayed
Late
Deception
Learn
Forgiven
Lost
Victims

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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.
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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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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.
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Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?
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Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
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We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.
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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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God cannot be solemn, or he would not have blessed man with the incalculable gift of laughter.
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Character is something you forge for yourself temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
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Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
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Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
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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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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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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 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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Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
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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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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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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