Neverisms Read online

  When Cousins was writing these books, I confess that I was only moderately familiar with his story. But in 1995, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was an unsettling time, to be sure, and it was made a bit more unsettling because I would not know for two months, when my scheduled surgery was done, whether the cancer had metastasized or not. I began to learn as much as I could during that period, and one night was delighted to discover yet another neverism for my ever-growing collection:

  Never deny a diagnosis,

  but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.NORMAN COUSINS

  Shortly after my surgery, I learned that there was no indication of metastasis. And now, more than fifteen years later, things are still looking good. Very good, indeed.

  Some of history’s most famous neverisms have been offered in humorous, ironic, or mock-serious ways. Three classic examples come from a character in Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side:

  Never play cards with a man called Doc.

  Never eat at a place called Mom’s.

  Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

  The words came from a fictional character, but they appeared to reflect Algren’s personal views as well. He was fond of telling people that he learned these three rules from “an elderly Negro lady,” and he often added that they were the only rules he used to guide his life. He sometimes emphasized the last point this way: “And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.”

  In most neverisms, people direct their cautionary warnings to someone else. Occasionally, though, we see people applying admonitions to themselves. In 1905, Mark Twain arrived at Delmonico’s restaurant in Manhattan to celebrate his seventieth birthday with 170 of his closest friends. Tucked into his pocket were notes he had made to guide him in the remarks he would be making later that evening. A few hours later, with the festivities in full gear, Twain finally rose to speak. What were his secrets to successful aging? The legendary humorist began by declaring his love of smoking and his abhorrence of exercise, saying, “I have achieved my seventy years . . . by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else.” He went on to say:

  I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.

  It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep,

  and never to refrain when awake.

  A century ago, it was common for people to say I’ve made it a rule never to, but the use of such a phrase today is rare. It is a variation on the neverisms theme, though, and you will find a number of examples later in the book. Here are two more:

  When I was younger,

  I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch.

  It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.WINSTON CHURCHILL, to King George VI,

  said in 1952, when Churchill was seventy-seven years old

  I’ve made it a rule never to drink by daylight

  and never to refuse a drink after dark.H. L. MENCKEN

  In another variation on the theme, people sometimes use the phrase one must never or one should never when offering principles of living or rules of conduct. As a general rule, these kinds of admonitions have a highfalutin quality, and they rarely pack the imperative punch of a straight-out neverism. But not always.

  In a discussion of “Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Ayn Rand asserted that mankind’s basic virtue was rationality. It is, she said, the wellspring of all other virtues and the only truly responsible guide to life. By contrast, she argued that man’s basic vice—and the source of all evil—is irrationality, a rejection of reason. Irrationality is not ignorance, which is simply not knowing, or blindness, which is not seeing. Irrationality is something far more pernicious, she maintained, and far more dangerous. It is “a refusal to see” and “a refusal to know.” In describing what it means to guide one’s life by the virtue of rationality, Rand offered a compelling explanation (the italics in the passage are provided for emphasis and do not appear in the original text):

  It means that one must never sacrifice one’s convictions

  to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)—

  that one must never attempt to fake reality

  in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)—

  that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved,

  neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice).

  It means that one must never desire effects without causes,

  and that one must never enact a cause without

  assuming full responsibility for its effects—

  that one must never act like a zombie,

  i.e., without knowing one’s own purposes and motives—

  that one must never make any decisions, form any convictions

  or seek any values out of context, i.e., apart from or against the total,

  integrated sum of one’s knowledge—

  and, above all, that one must never seek to get away with contradictions.

  This passage is longer than the quotations you’ve seen so far, but I wanted to make the point that some of history’s most powerful neverisms do not begin with the word never. For many intellectuals and others who wish to express themselves a bit more elegantly, one must never or one should never are commonly used phrases.

  In the remainder of the book, you will find nearly 2,000 quotations that, to recall Willard Espy’s words from earlier, fall into the category of “Dissuasive advice given with authority.” Most of them will be 100 percent pure admonitions, but occasionally you will find some that contain both an exhortative and a dehortative component, as in these examples:

  Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.CONFUCIUS

  Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.JOHN F. KENNEDY

  Always take your work seriously, never yourself.DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, quoting an “old saying”

  The book is organized into chapters on such topics as Wit & Wordplay, Politics & Government, Sports, Stage & Screen, and The Literary Life. By examining the Table of Contents, you will see that I have also given each chapter a neveristic title. I’ll begin each chapter with a few foundation-laying pages that I hope will engage your attention and whet your interest. After that, I will present a wide variety of quotations, alphabetically arranged by author, that fit within the theme of the chapter. If you wish to locate a quotation from a particular author, please consult the Author Index.

  If you are familiar with my previous quotation anthologies, you will know that I often provide a bit of historical or contextual information about a quotation, and sometimes even offer some personal commentary. To use a popular current term, you might say that I enjoy telling the backstory on a quotation or its author. Several months ago, for example, I happened across what I regarded as an interesting, but not especially remarkable, quotation:

  Never turn down a job because you think it’s too small;

  you don’t know where it can lead.JULIA MORGAN

  I had never heard of Julia Morgan, so I decided to do a little digging. What I found was fascinating. In 1894, she graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, the only female in her class. At the urging of a professor, she immediately headed off to Paris to study architecture at the famed École des Beaux-Arts. It took two frustrating years to gain admittance, though, as the school had never before admitted a woman. But Morgan persisted, and in 1902 she became the school’s first female graduate. After moving back to California, where she became the state’s first female architect, she almost immediately began to make a name for herself. A bell tower she designed in 1904 for Mills College in Oakland was the first reinforced-concrete structure to be built on the West Coast. When the tower remained standing after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Morgan’s reputation skyrocketed.

  The backstory on the quota
tion is even more interesting. Morgan made her never turn down a job remark in 1918. A year later, in 1919, she was approached by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst about designing a small bungalow on a rustic property he owned midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He said to her:I would like to build something up on the hill at San Simeon. I get tired of going up there and camping in tents. I’m getting a little too old for that. I’d like to get something that would be a little more comfortable.

  After a month of discussion, the architect and the magnate began to think more grandly about the project—which ultimately went on to occupy the next eighteen years of Morgan’s life! Today, Julia Morgan is best remembered as the designer of Hearst Castle, a luxurious 60,000-square-foot mansion with 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, and 19 sitting rooms. Formally named La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Hill”), it is now a U.S. National Historic Landmark and one of California’s most popular tourist attractions. And it all happened because this pioneering female architect followed her own admonition about never turning down a job because it was too small.

  During my research, background stories like this were repeated time and time again. I found them so interesting that I felt I would be shortchanging readers if I did not share at least some of them. As you approach this book, then, remember that it is not just an anthology of quotations; it is an anthology about quotations as well—and the often fascinating stories of the people who authored them.

  In my search for neverisms, I have cast my net far and wide. As a result, you can expect to find almost all of the most popular and familiar neverisms in these pages. But you will also find many quotations that you have never seen before, as well as many that have never before appeared in a quotation collection. Despite my goal of comprehensiveness, though, I’m sure that many deserving quotations have eluded me. If you have a favorite that is not included, please feel free to e-mail it to me at: [email protected].

  I also have a website (www.drmardy.com ) where you can delve even more deeply into the topic of neverisms, learn more about my other books, or sign up for my free weekly e-newsletter: Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week. I have striven for accuracy but am quite certain that I have made some mistakes. If you discover an error or would simply like to offer some feedback, please write to me in care of the publisher, or e-mail me at the address above. I hope you enjoy the book.

  one

  Never Go to a Doctor Whose Office Plants Have Died

  Wit & Wordplay

  In 1965, Dave Barry graduated from Pleasantville High School in New York, proud of having been voted “Class Clown” by his schoolmates. Later that year, he entered Haverford College—a small, prestigious liberal arts college near Philadelphia—where he majored in English, played lead guitar in a local rock band, and wrote a regular humor column for the college newspaper.

  Barry avoided service in Vietnam after he was declared a conscientious objector. He did two years of alternative service before beginning his journalism career in 1971, when he became a general assignment reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania. After three years writing about town hall meetings, sewage plants, and zoning regulations, he gave up his dreams of a journalism career to work for a firm that taught writing skills to business executives. If anything, this new job was even more mind-numbing than his newspaper gig, but it paid better, and Barry worked at it for nearly eight years before declaring his efforts to improve executive prose “hopeless.”

  In 1981, Barry wrote a guest humor column on natural childbirth for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The article somehow landed on the desk of Gene Weingarten, an editor at the Miami Herald. Years later, Weingarten recalled, “I read it and realized it was the first time in my life I had laughed out loud while reading the printed word.” Weingarten convinced his bosses to hire Barry to write a regular humor column for the Herald. Within a year, Barry had one of the fastest-growing syndicated columns in America. In 1988, five years after coming to the Herald, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the only humorist to ever win journalism’s top award. Barry halted his weekly column-writing efforts in 2004, and has recently coauthored a number of fictional efforts with Ridley Pearson. Of his thirty books, though, Barry’s books of humor are my favorites, in large part because of his talent for finding humor in the most unexpected of places.

  Never make eye contact.

  This appeared in Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need (1991). In providing tips for getting maximum enjoyment out of a trip to New York City, Barry added: “This is asking to be mugged. In the New York court system, a mugger is automatically declared not guilty if the defense can prove that the victim has a history of making eye contact.” The passage is a perfect illustration of why the Pulitzer Prize committee lauded Barry for “his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns.” In the book, Barry also offered two “cardinal rules” for tourists:

  Never go outside the hotel.

  Never board a commercial aircraft if the pilot is wearing a tank top.

  And “the number one rule” for people traveling to Europe:

  Never pee in the bidet.

  One of Barry’s most distinctive tricks is adopting a serious tone when first offering a piece of advice and then giving it a humorous twist in the explanation. In Dave Barry’s Money Secrets (2006), he begins a thought on teaching children the value of money this way:

  Never allow a child to spend all of his allowance.

  And then he explains: “Insist that he set aside a certain amount of money every week and put it in a safe place, where you can get it if you need to buy beer.” A bit later in the book, he does the same thing when offering rules for effective negotiating. He starts off by writing: “Never pay list price. I mean never. For anything, including intimate carnal relations with your spouse.” And then, in a footnote, he adds, “Just so you know: Your spouse usually charges $50.”

  In Dave Barry Turns 50 (1998), there is a piece on pervasive drug use in the sixties and seventies by Jimi Hendrix and other rock stars. In citing what can be learned from the experiences of drugged-out celebrities, Barry cites “an old maxim,” but it seems pretty clear that he is the original author of the saying:

  Never try to put all the chemicals in the entire world

  in your body at the same time.

  My favorite Barry neverism, though, appeared in his 2004 book Boogers Are My Beat. I had originally shied away from the book because of the title, but I’m glad I picked it up. As a proud North Dakota native, I was drawn to one column in particular. It began with these words:

  My advice to aspiring columnists is:

  Never make fun of North Dakota.

  Barry explained: “Because the North Dakotans will invite you, nicely but relentlessly, to visit, and eventually you’ll have to accept. When you get there, they’ll be incredibly nice to you, treating you with such warmth and hospitality that before long you feel almost like family. Then they will try to asphyxiate you with sewer gas.” The column was inspired by a mid-winter trip Barry had made to Grand Forks, North Dakota, to participate in a dedication ceremony for a municipal sewage pumping station that had been named for him. I won’t go into the rest of the story here, but in several hundred words Barry may have written the all-time best description of life in North Dakota in the dead of winter.

  Many websites and quotation anthologies have also attributed the following quotations to Dave Barry:

  Never lick a steak knife.

  Never, under any circumstances,

  take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

  Never tell a woman that you didn’t realize she was pregnant

  unless you’re certain that she is.

  Despite their popularity, I now regard these as orphan quotations, a term for anonymously authored observations that are attached to famous people to give them stature. The last one appears to be a paraphrase of something Barry wrote in a 1997 piece called
“25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years”: “You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.”

  If Dave Barry was America’s most popular male humorist in the final decades of the twentieth century, then Erma Bombeck was his female counterpart. After graduating as an English major from the University of Dayton in 1949, she married her college sweetheart, Bill Bombeck, and took a job as a full-time reporter at the local Dayton Journal Herald. She had worked as a part-time copy girl at the paper since the age of fifteen, and at sixteen achieved her first great journalistic success when the paper printed an interview she did with Shirley Temple. For the next several years, she wrote primarily for the women’s section of the paper, occasionally landing interviews with visiting celebrities, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Mamie Eisenhower. She also made her first stab at a humorous housekeeping column, which she titled “Operation Dishrag.”