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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.

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
Getting
Western
Less
Lessons
Energy
Civilization
Done
Worth
Right
Strength
Expend
Important
Learned
Lesson
Things
Takes
Priorities
Moral
Decide

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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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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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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
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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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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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Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
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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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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.
Sydney J. Harris
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Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
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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.
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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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Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer this is how commencement speakers are caught.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.'
Sydney J. Harris
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If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.
Sydney J. Harris
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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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A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris
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A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. I got it from my good judgment, he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? I got it from my bad judgment.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
Sydney J. Harris
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A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you -- out of love -- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
Sydney J. Harris
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Those obsessed with health are not healthy the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
Sydney J. Harris