Quotes from Sydney J. Harris

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'

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

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

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

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

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.

When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.

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

When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

The profound immoralities of our time are cruelty, indifference, injustice and the use of others as means rather than ends in themselves.

By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.

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'.

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

Time is love, above all else. It is the most precious commodity in the world and should be lavished on those we care most about.

Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.

The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred.

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

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.

Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.

A 'penchant for telling the truth' can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor's wife.

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.

We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

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.