Sydney J. Harris

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

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

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out communication is getting through.

Ninety percent 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.

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

The true test of independent judgement is being able to dislike someone who admires us.

People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning man until they learned whether he fell in through his own fault or not.

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

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost " and say "I lost it."

Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere it is not this sort of licence that distinguishes New York. It is rather a lust of the total ego for recognition even for eminence. More than elsewhere everybody here wants to be Somebody.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he is in a hopeless bind. His goals have been set for him by his milieu, and he cannot be his own man; so he simply refuses to play the game. He "does not try.

Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer__or unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.

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

When a man says "I know what I mean, but I can't express it," he generally does not know what he means__or there can be no knowledge without words; there can only be feelings.