243 Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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.

Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.

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."

Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams. Happiness is a direction, not a place.

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.

More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.

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.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

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.