Neverisms Read online

  Neverisms

  Mardy Grothe

  Neverisms

  A QUOTATION LOVER’S GUIDE TO THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER DO, NEVER SAY, OR NEVER FORGET

  Dr. Mardy Grothe

  Dedication

  To Carolanne and Linnda, with deep gratitude

  Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  One

  Never Go to a Doctor Whose Office Plants Have Died

  (Wit & Wordplay)

  Two

  Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

  (Words to Live By)

  Three

  Never Give Advice Unless Asked

  (Advice)

  Four

  Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Do Today

  (Classic Neverisms)

  Five

  Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman: And a Lot of Other Things as Well

  (“Never Underestimate” Neverisms)

  Six

  Never Trust a Computer You Can’t Lift

  (“Never Trust” Neverisms)

  Seven

  Never Give In. Never, Never, Never, Never!

  (Multiple Neverisms)

  Eight

  Never Persist in Trying to Set People Right

  (Human Relationships)

  Nine

  Never Approach a Woman from Behind

  (Sex, Love & Romance)

  Ten

  Never Change Diapers in Mid-Stream

  (Marriage, Home & Family Life)

  Eleven

  Never Mention a No-Hitter While It’s in Progress

  (Sports)

  Twelve

  Never Get Caught in Bed with a Live Man or a Dead Woman

  (Politics & Government)

  Thirteen

  Never Coddle a Malcontent

  (Business & Management)

  Fourteen

  Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

  (Book, Song & Movie Titles)

  Fifteen

  Never Judge a Book by Its Movie

  (Stage & Screen)

  Sixteen

  Never Answer an Anonymous Letter

  (Oxymoronic & Paradoxical Neverisms)

  Seventeen

  Never Cut What You Can Untie

  (Metaphorical Neverisms)

  Eighteen

  Never Use a Long Word Where a Short One Will Do

  (The Literary Life)

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  About the Author

  Also by Dr. Mardy Grothe

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  For as long as humans have been able to communicate, they’ve used language to influence one another. Often, these attempts at influence take the form of urging people to live their lives according to a guiding principle or rule of conduct:

  Try to be a little kinder than is necessary.

  Make every effort to do what you are afraid to do.

  Be smarter than the people who hire you.

  When people state something as a rule, they are suggesting that the principle is an important one. Occasionally, they consider the principle to be so critically important they express it more forcefully, or even unequivocally:

  Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.

  J. M. BARRIE

  Always do what you are afraid to do.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

  LENA HORNE

  When attempts to influence are stated unequivocally, people move from mere suggestion to the more compelling arena of exhortation. The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) defines the verb exhort this way:

  To urge by strong, often stirring argument, admonition, advice, or appeal.

  Derived from the Latin exhortor, meaning “to encourage,” the root sense of the term is to urge or spur someone on. Exhortation is the perfect word to describe the three quotations above, each of which is an earnest attempt to persuade people to take a recommended course of action or embrace an idea.

  History is also filled with equally strong attempts to discourage people from a certain practice or to dissuade them from a course of action.

  Never judge a book by its cover.

  Never swap horses in mid-stream.

  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Instead of recommending that people do something, these sayings strongly urge people not to do—indeed, never to do—something. What is the proper term for such negatively phrased exhortations?

  One obvious candidate, of course, is admonition, which has two meanings: (1) a gentle reproof, and (2) cautionary advice or warning. The first meaning shows up, for example, when a teacher admonishes a child for being late to class or a boss admonishes an employee for being careless. It is the second meaning that applies to our current discussion. In a usage note, the editors of the AHD write:

  Admonish implies the giving of advice or a warning

  so that a fault can be rectified or a danger avoided.

  The term admonition nicely describes each of the three proverbial sayings presented a moment ago. Each one could even be rephrased to emphasize the fault or danger element (as in, “Never make the mistake of judging a book by its cover”). The three following sayings could also be accurately described as admonitions:

  Never send a boy to do a man’s job.

  Never underestimate the power of a woman.

  Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

  As would these cautionary warnings from influential thinkers in ancient history:

  Never travel with a friend who deserts you at the first sign of danger.AESOP, 6th century B.C.

  Never contract friendship with a man who is not better than thyself.CONFUCIUS, 6th century B.C.

  In a case of dissension,

  never dare to judge until you have heard the other side.EURIPIDES, 5th century B.C.

  Never ask the gods for a life set free from grief,

  but ask for courage that endureth long.MENANDER, 4th century B.C.

  While admonition is a perfectly fine term to use when describing strongly worded cautionary warnings, there is another word that is, technically speaking, even more accurate. It is the antonym of exhortation. But unless you have the vocabulary of a five-time Jeopardy! champ or you’re a professor of rhetoric, the word is almost certainly not in your current vocabulary. The exact opposite of exhortation is dehortation.

  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines dehortation this way: “The act of dehorting from a course of action; earnest dissuasion.” This doesn’t help very much, but the OED’s entry on dehort makes it clearer:

  To use exhortation to dissuade from a course or purpose;

  to advise or counsel against (an action, etc.).

  When we exhort people, we’re encouraging them to do something; we’re trying to spur them on. It’s a form of persuasion. When we dehort people, on the other hand, we’re trying to convince people that they should not do something, or maybe even never do it. Dehortation is a form of discouragement or negative persuasion, which is technically called dissuasion. We can summarize it all in an analogy:

  Exhortation is to dehortation as persuasion is to dissuasion.

  I first came across the word dehort a number of years ago while browsing through a fascinating book by David Grambs: The Endangered English Dictionary: Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot (1994). Grambs is an American writer who actually worked at one of my fantasy jobs: dictionary definer. While in this position for the American Heritage Dictionary and the Random House Dictionary, Grambs became intrigued by the many English words that either fell out of favor or never caught on, even though they perfectly captured some aspect of human life. In his “remembranc
e of words past,” he wrote a book to serve as “a constant reminder of the words that could have been, that fell through the cracks.” He also hoped that his book would awaken interest in some currently neglected words and possibly inspire readers to make them “a part of our everyday usage.” Among the thousands of words Grambs included in his book was:

  dehort (dee-hort); to loudly or strongly advise against or dissuade from.

  In 2007, I was delighted to see dehort featured in an issue of “A.Word.A.Day” (AWAD), a daily e-mail that I—and over a million other subscribers—look forward to receiving every day. AWAD was launched in 1994 by Anu Garg, a computer scientist who turned his love for words into one of the Internet’s most dramatic success stories. In 2002, the New York Times described AWAD as “arguably the most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace.” Garg defined dehort as “to discourage from doing something.” He then added:This well-meaning word has gone out of circulation while its antithesis “exhort” continues to prosper. It’s about time to remedy the situation and bring this rather usable word back to currency.

  I stand firmly with Grambs and Garg in believing that dehort and dehortation should be rescued from the closet of obscurity and brought into the world of popular usage. Currently, though, those two words are familiar only to serious linguaphiles and students of rhetoric, who appreciate their relationship to a classical figure of speech known as dehortatio (DEE-hore-TAY-she-oh or DAY-hore-TAHT-ee-oh).

  In The Garden of Eloquence: A Rhetorical Bestiary (1983), Willard R. Espy defined dehortatio as “Dissuasive advice given with authority.” He went on to explain that “Dehortatio is negative persuasion; it tells what not to do.” In providing examples, he gave several famous sayings that did not begin with the word never, including:

  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.(THE FIRST COMMANDMENT)

  Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.WILLIAM PRESCOTT

  At first, the notion that commandments were dehortations came as a surprise, but it made sense once I began to think about it. Many of the Ten Commandments, after all, certainly meet the criterion of dissuasive advice given with authority. And while I accept the idea that dehortations can also begin with the words don’t or do not, I’m not convinced they are the best examples of the form. Look over the following quotations:

  Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.BERNARD M. BARUCH

  Don’t try to fine-tune somebody else’s view.GEORGE H. W. BUSH

  Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.PHILIP K. DICK

  Do not mistake a child for his symptom.ERIK ERIKSON

  Don’t overestimate your own merits.BERTRAND RUSSELL

  Yes, they are all fine dehortations. And technically, all are examples of the “negative persuasion” that Espy described earlier. But think how much more memorable each could have been if expressed just a bit more forcefully:

  Never blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.

  Never try to fine-tune somebody else’s view.

  Never try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

  Never mistake a child for his symptom.

  Never overestimate your own merits.

  The implication, I hope, is apparent. If you’re ever thinking about the best way to offer dissuasive advice—and you want to do it forcefully—select words with impact. And that may mean changing an anemic don’t or a mousy do not into an authoritative never. With a tip of the hat to the rhetorical figure of dehortatio, we might even say:

  Never let a weak word diminish the strength of your argument.

  Being a realist, I know that dehort and dehortation will probably never become a part of popular usage. But there is another term you might want to consider when describing cautionary warnings and dissuasive advice introduced with the word never. You won’t find the word in any dictionary because I coined it myself. The word is neverism. A few years ago, I did something similar when I created the term ifferism to describe an aphorism that begins with the word if. That neologism worked out fairly well, and I’m hoping that neverism will also be given a warm welcome. Like all good nouns, neverism comes with a corresponding adjective and adverb, so you can also expect to see the words neveristic and neveristically in the pages ahead.

  I began the systematic collection of quotations many decades ago, and I pursue my hobby with the same fervor that is often found in serious collectors of coins, stamps, butterflies, and other objects of fascination. I’m always on the lookout for new “finds,” and I feel a definite thrill when I come across a great new specimen I have never seen before. Like all serious collectors, I have also tried to organize my enormous collection of quotations into a number of more manageable categories. In my case, I put them into computer files with labels like chiasmus, retorts, puns, insults, paradox, lost positives, modified maxims, and ifferisms. For more than twenty years, I have also had a file for quotations that begin with the word never.

  Some of history’s best-known quotations have been expressed neveristically, and one very special admonition has long been a personal favorite:

  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,

  committed citizens can change the world.MARGARET MEAD

  This is the most famous quotation from one of history’s most famous women. The saying is so intimately associated with Mead—and so often cited by people who don’t exactly subscribe to her core beliefs—that it has been registered to protect its use. The trademark is currently held by Mead’s granddaughter, Sevanne Kassarjian, who has graciously given her permission to include it here. The Institute for Intercultural Studies, which Mead founded in 1944, prominently features the saying on its website. An original citation for the saying has never been found, but the Institute does provide this statement on its origin:We believe it probably came into circulation through a newspaper report of something said spontaneously and informally. We know, however, that it was firmly rooted in her professional work and that it reflected a conviction that she expressed often, in different contexts and phrasings.

  While many neverisms have helped shape my philosophy of life, one in particular helped me fundamentally reshape a longstanding, but not particularly effective, habit:

  Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man.

  It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.SYDNEY SMITH

  I originally found this observation in Tryon Edward’s A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891), the oldest quotation anthology in my collection of over 300 such books. Smith was an Anglican clergyman and a popular London writer in the early 1800s. In the mid–1970s, when I first came across the quotation, I was a young idealist with a reputation for spending countless hours attempting to reason with people who held what I regarded as unfounded or irrational beliefs. Smith’s admonition was like a reminder from Dr. Phil, gently tapping me on the shoulder and asking, “So how’s that working for you?”

  In my early adulthood, I was a great reader of fiction, and a large number of the quotations in my neverisms collection came from fictional characters. Many of them almost jumped off the pages at me as I was reading some well-known novels:

  Never abandon hope.FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, from the Elder Zosima

  in The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

  Never completely encircle your enemy.

  Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.ALEX HALEY, advice from the kintango, in Roots (1977)

  Never pass up new experiences, Scarlett. They enrich the mind.MARGARET MITCHELL, from Rhett Butler,

  in Gone with the Wind (1936)

  Never think you’ve seen the last of anything.EUDORA WELTY, from Judge McKelva

  in The Optimist’s Daughter (1972)

  In my favorite fictional neverism, though, Mario Puzo writes in The Godfather (1969):

  “Never get angry,” the Don had instructed.

  “Never make a threat. Reason with people.”

  This is a wonder
ful passage, ironically capturing the reasoning ability of Don Corleone, and rivaling his even-more-famous line about making someone an offer he couldn’t refuse. For reasons I will never understand, the passage never made it into the 1972 film adapted from the novel (even though the screenplay was written by Puzo). The two neverisms in the book are so perfectly suited for Marlon Brando that, had he actually delivered them in the film, they almost certainly would have become classics.

  In several wonderful examples of serendipity, some neverisms have appeared in my life exactly when I needed them. When I was a graduate student, I was struck by how readily my fellow students became adherents of a particular school of psychological thought. Of course, the students were simply following the lead of so many professors, who seemed more than willing to proclaim themselves Freudians, Jungians, Rogerians, Skinnerians, or disciples of some other approach. At the time, such a choice seemed ill-advised and shortsighted, but I sometimes found myself wondering if I might be the one who was making a mistake.

  Late in my graduate school career, I was reading Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!, the 1972 autobiography of A. S. Neill, the legendary Scottish educator who founded the progressive English school Summerhill (the title of Neill’s book, by the way, came from a rhyming nickname that he had been given by his students). In the book, I found some reassuring words:

  My motto has always been:

  Take from others what you want,

  but never be a disciple of anyone.

  In 1979, Norman Cousins, the longtime Saturday Review editor and legendary peace activist, was in the news once again, this time for Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient (1979), a dramatic story about how he overcame a painful and potentially life-threatening form of arthritis. After learning that one of his physicians had said, “I’m afraid we’re going to lose Norman,” Cousins figured he had nothing to lose and took control over his own treatment. He began watching Marx Brothers movies and Candid Camera videos every day, discovering that “ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect that would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” He slowly began to improve—greatly surprising his doctors—and began to view laughter as sedentary aerobic exercise. He also began to view the mind as an essential factor in a patient’s recovery. Ten years after his first book, he further explored the topic in Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit (1989).