Sydney J. Harris Quotes

I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.

Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.

The struggle for your own character is the struggle for the nation's character.

One was born a certain sort of person, and though by ceasless struggle one might become as nice as that sort of person ever is, one could never become as nice as a nicer sort of person.

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

I think people kind of come in who they are, and it sort of doesn't even matter who their parents are - it can affect you a little bit, and you can be guided and shaped.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

Temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body. Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict.

What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?

Personality is less a finished product than a transitive process. While it has some stable features, it is at the same time continually undergoing change.

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.

You are defined by who you are, by your choices in life, in all regards, not just in doing movies.

I couldn't change who I am; I couldn't change the kind of player I am.

I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be.

If you really have your own identity you'll keep on doing what you think is really right for you, and you'll also understand the next step you want to take.

One creates oneself.

I'm very independent, creatively, always trying to push myself - and I think that comes from my mother.

The enormous potentiality for nature’s bounty and men’s capacity to differentiate their experience can become valued by the individual himself so that he will not be tempted and coerced into adjustment

We can all become better than we are.

… temperament is your basic orientation toward life. The Elizabethans boiled it down to four types: You were choleric or sanguine or melancholy or aggressive. You can be a good leader from any of them. Lincoln was melancholy, but what a president! It’s more to do with how you grow, how you learn from your mistakes.

Freedom is the possibility of development, of enhancement of one's life - or the possibility of withdrawing, shutting oneself up, denying and stultifying one's growth.

I never had a role model. I ended up wanting to be the best version of myself.

I know that I'm in grime, but I had to separate myself and do things myself.

You cannot force somebody to be a different person.