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Quotes from Clearing the Ground — Sydney J. Harris

1917–1986 England

← All quotes by Sydney J. Harris

6 quotes

The core in the mystery of what we call personality resides in the individual mix between character and temperament.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

The human Jesus is, to my mind, the ultimate paradigm of such psychic equilibrium. He was absolutely hard on himself and absolutely tender toward others.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

There are some things people can do to change and some things they cannot do — character can be formed, but temperament is given. And the strong who cannot bend are just as much to be pitied as the weak who cannot stiffen.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.

Clearing the Ground (1986)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sydney J. Harris (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.