Sydney J. Harris's Quotes

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.

Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.

Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.

Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

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.

The beauty of 'spacing' children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

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.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

Happiness is a direction, not a place.