Sydney J. Harris
Sydney J. Harris
Sydney J. Harris was an American journalist for the Chicago Daily News and, later, the Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote 11 books and his weekday column, "Strictly Personal", was syndicated in approximately 200 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. He also wrote an aperiodic feature called "Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things".
"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."
"Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder — and turn quickly to my typewriter."
"An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run."
"The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion."
"When I hear somebody sigh that "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
"Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught."
