We are just beginning to learn that our same old habits, like the exploitation of nonrenewable resources, may make us at one with the auk and the dod… - 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.

Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you — either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.

Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder — and turn quickly to my typewriter.