Sydney J. Harris Quotes

I had no intention of providing any answers or solutions, because you'd only look a fool, but I did want to talk about what it's like to be in a state where you're wondering. And perhaps I was also receptive to the fact I was entering middle age and those thoughts come - to pretend that they don't come is just crazy.

You know, you get to a certain age, 45, 50, I don't know when it happens, I said, 'Jesus, all I got is a certain amount of time. Maybe I should think about using it a little better.'

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.

I am really puzzled to understand myself.

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

I don't have children, and I am not sure if I have wanted them or never wanted them. It's weird not to be able to decide.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

I do struggle with the fact that I don't have all the answers.

I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.

I never had the chance to consider what or how I wanted to be.

Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?

When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.

So basically, I don't know what I'm talking about. But maybe I do.

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

I still don't know quite what I'm supposed to do or be.

The conversation topic in my head is not what role I should play; it is whether I am going to play at all.

I don't know whether I like it, but it is what I meant.

When you hit your 40s, you're walking around, and you realize, 'Oh, my God, men don't look at me anymore.' Or sometimes you can feel really good, and then you look in the mirror, and you're like, 'Oh, Jesus, that's my face now!' But I have tell you that something happened and shifted inside of me.

What the heck did people see in me?

I definitely don't think I'm going to have a mid-life crisis.

I think we all do: I think we wonder if we're supposed to be here, if we're doing the right thing, if we even want to be here. At least, I do all the time.

In my 20s and early 30s, I was very much a man lost at sea, with very little direction in life, and painfully immature.

There is no shame is being ambivalent about almost everything in your life.

When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.