List of Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Gourmet: Usually Little More Than A Glutton Festooned With Credit Cards.

A 'penchant For Telling The Truth' Can Cripple A Candidates Chances Faster Than Being Caught In Flagrante Delicto With The Governor's Wife.

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.

Christianity Is Not A "spiritual" Religion, Like Some Religions Of The East. It Is An Intensely "practical" Religion, Having Its Moral Roots In The Practicality Of Judaism. It Was Not Designed To Change The Way Men Think Or Believe As Much As To Change The Way They Act.

Just About The Only Interruption We Don't Object To Is Applause.

People Decline Invitations When They Are "indisposed" Physically, And I Wish They Would Do Likewise When They Feel Indisposed Emotionally. A Person Has No More Right To Attend A Party With A Head Full Of Venom Than With A Throat Full Of Virus.

The Lusts Of The Flesh Can Be Gratified Anywhere; It Is Not This Sort Of License 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.

Knowledge Fills A Large Brain; It Merely Inflates A Small One.

Somebody Who Never Got Over The Embarrassing Fact That He Was Born In Bed With A Lady.

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.

Nothing Is As Easy To Make As A Promise This Winter To Do Something Next Summer; This Is How Commencement Speakers Are Caught.

Law Is Order In Liberty, And Without Order Liberty Is Social Chaos.

Sincerity That Thinks It Is The Sole Possessor Of The Truth Is A Deadlier Sin Than Hypocrisy, Which Knows Better.

Ignorance Per Se Is Not Nearly As Dangerous As Ignorance Of Ignorance.

The Main Discomfort In Being A Middle-of-the-roader Is That You Get Sideswiped By Partisans Going In Both Directions.

Nice Things Are Done For Our Own Sake, Not For The Sake Of Others. The Pleasure Must Reside In The Performance, Not In The Applause. Good Deeds Are, In A Deeper Psychological Way, A Favor To Oneself. If This Is Not Grasped, Then Our Whole Sense Of Personal Relationships Becomes Warped.

The Public Examination Of Homosexuality In Our Contemporary Life Is Still So Coated With Distasteful Moral Connotations That Even A Reviewer Is Bound To Wonder Uneasily Why He Was Selected To Evaluate A Book On The Subject, And To Assert Defensively At The Outset That He Is Happily Married, The Father Of Four Children And The One-time Adornment Of His College Boxing, Track And Tennis Teams.

Making Out An Invitation List For A Party Brings Out The Worst In Everyone. It Is Then That Our Most Ruthless Estimates Of The People We Know Come Into Play.

It Is Not Only Useless, It Is Harmful, To Believe In Oneself Until One Truly Knows Oneself. And To Know Oneself Means To Accept Our Moments Of Insanity, Of Eccentricity, Of Childishness And Blindness.

Filth Is Always A Sign Of Weakness - In The Mouth Of The User And In The Mind Of The Writer.

God Cannot Be Solemn, Or He Would Not Have Blessed Man With The Incalculable Gift Of Laughter.

But What Is Significant Is That If You Don't Want To Like And Accept Somebody, One Excuse Is As Good As Another. The Objective Facts Don't Matter, And The Reasons Are Never As ‘reasonable' As We Like To Think They Are.

Man's Unique Agony As A Species Consists In His Perpetual Conflict Between The Desire To Stand Out And The Need To Blend In.

Almost Every Man Looks More So In A Belted Trench Coat.