Neverisms Read online

  Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.ADDISON MIZNER

  Never raise your hand to your children;

  it leaves your midsection unprotected.ROBERT ORBEN

  This line is often attributed to comedian Red Buttons, but it was originally authored by Orben. In 1946, at age eighteen, Orben wrote Encyclopedia of Patter, the first of his many joke books (he also published a comedy newsletter for three decades). In the 1950s and ’60s, he was America’s most famous gag writer, doing stints with Dick Gregory, Jack Paar, and Red Skelton. Orben was such a comedic staple in the 1960s that Lenny Bruce said his routines were different from mainstream comics in part because they contained “no Orben jokes.” As a speechwriter for President Gerald Ford, Orben was almost certainly the man who authored Ford’s famous “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln” line.

  Never ask old people how they are

  if you have anything else to do that day.JOE RESTIVO

  Never start offshore oil exploration unless you know the drill.DENNIS RIDLEY, offered shortly after the BP

  oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010

  Never buy a fur from a veterinarian.JOAN RIVERS

  Rivers has also been quoted as offering these additional thoughts:

  Never floss with a stranger.

  Never let a panty line show around your ankle.

  Never play peek-a-boo with a child on a long plane trip.

  There’s no end to the game.RITA RUDNER

  This came from a Rudner sketch that ended this way: “Finally I grabbed him by the bib and said, ‘Look, it’s always gonna be me!’ ”

  Never jog while wearing wingtips—

  unless you are attending the Nerd Convention in Atlantic City.MARK RUSSELL

  Never do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to the paramedic.SHANNON RYAN

  Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them.RICHARD STRAUSS, one of his ten rules for young composers

  Never look down on short people.GREG TAMBLYN

  Never answer a telephone that rings before breakfast.JAMES THURBER, in Lanterns & Lances (1961)

  Thurber added: “It is sure to be one of three types of persons: a strange man in Minneapolis who has been up all night and is phoning collect; a salesman who wants to come over and demonstrate a combination Dictaphone and music box that also cleans rugs; or a woman out of one’s past.”

  Never say “oops” in the operating room.DR. LEO TROY, orthopedic surgeon

  Never learn to do anything.

  If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.MARK TWAIN, quoting facetious advice from his mother

  Never run after your own hat—others will be delighted to do it.

  Why spoil their fun?MARK TWAIN

  Never pick a fight with an ugly person; they’ve got nothing to lose.ROBIN WILLIAMS

  Never wear a backwards baseball cap to an interview

  unless applying for the job of umpire.DAN ZEVIN, advising Generation-Xers, in

  Entry-Level Life: A Complete Guide to Masquerading

  as a Member of the Real World (1994)

  two

  Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

  Words to Live By

  In 2003, Marlene Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, made an unexpected gift to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston: thirty previously unpublished letters that her mother had received from another icon of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway. The bequest stipulated that the letters were to be kept private until 2007, fifteen years after Dietrich’s death.

  Hemingway and Dietrich first met on the French ocean liner Île de France in 1934. As the years passed, when they were occasionally seen together, she reverentially called him “Papa,” even though he was only three years her senior, and he called her “my little Kraut” or, as he also did with many of his other female friends, “daughter.”

  When the letters—written between 1949 and 1953—were made public in 2007, they set the literary world abuzz. Hemingway fans had long known of the pair’s deep friendship, but few expected the depths of passion revealed in the correspondence. Hemingway was fifty when he wrote his first letter—and married to fourth wife, Mary—but he expressed his feelings like a lovesick teenager. In one letter, he wrote, “I love you and I hold you tight and kiss you hard.” And in another, “Every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home.”

  Dietrich wrote back with equal ardor. In a 1951 letter that began with the salutation “Beloved Papa,” she wrote:I think it is high time to tell you that I think of you constantly. I read your letters over and over and speak of you with a few chosen men. I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly.

  Despite the obvious passion, the pair were not lovers. At one point, Hemingway offered a fascinating explanation to his friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner:We have been in love since 1934 . . . but we’ve never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes of hers, I was submerged.

  In Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (1966), Hotchner reported that Dietrich deeply respected Hemingway’s thoughts and opinions. In one conversation with Hotchner, she paid Hemingway a beautiful tribute:He is always there to talk to, to get letters from, and in conversation and letters I find the things I can use for whatever problems I may have; he has often helped me without even knowing my problems. He says remarkable things that seem to automatically adjust to problems of all sizes.

  Dietrich went on to describe a telephone conversation she had with Hemingway. It began innocuously enough, with Papa simply asking how things were going. She told him she had recently received an offer to perform at a Miami nightclub but was not sure she wanted to accept it. The offer made by the club was lucrative, she explained, but her heart was simply not in it. When she thought of refusing the offer, though, she found herself wondering if she was just “pampering” herself. Her explanation was met with a moment of silence on Hemingway’s part, after which he said, “Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do.” And then he added:

  Never confuse movement with action.

  Hemingway’s words immediately cleared up any doubts Dietrich was having about the decision. But it was her comment about the admonition that has been remembered to history:

  In those five words he gave me a whole philosophy.

  There are periods in all of our lives when we are especially receptive to the influence of others. During these times—often called teachable moments—a handful of words can so dramatically impact our lives that they literally become words to live by. That’s what happened to Dietrich. In five perfectly phrased words delivered at exactly the right moment, Hemingway provided Dietrich with a working philosophy she could use as a guide for the rest of her life.

  Almost all of the people I know can recall a specific time in their lives when they had their equivalent of a Dietrich-Hemingway moment. In Norman Vincent Peale’s 1965 book The Tough-Minded Optimist, the legendary preacher and writer recalled a time shortly after graduating from college in 1920. Filled with fear and easily intimidated by the people around him, he was in great danger of failing at his first job as a cub reporter for the Detroit Journal. One day, as he was sitting in the office of Grove Patterson, the newspaper’s editor, Peale revealed his self-doubts to his boss. Recognizing that the young man needed a wake-up call, the crusty editor pointed a blunt, ink-stained finger directly into Peale’s face and said:

  Never be afraid of anybody or anything in this life!

  As Peale retold the incident forty-five years later, he said something that so many people have said when recalling words to live by from an early period of their life: “I remember that statement as though it were yesterday.”

  Some words to live by don’t hinge on the chanciness of a teachable moment but are carefu
lly orchestrated by someone who is trying make sure a life lesson is learned. In his 1998 book Pushing the Envelope All the Way to the Top, bestselling author Harvey Mackay recalled an incident when he was eight years old. As he was sitting on the banister at the top of a flight of stairs, his father looked up and asked him if he would like to learn a lesson that might one day save his life as a businessman. Intrigued, young Harvey agreed. “Just slide down the banister and I’ll catch you,” said his father. Becoming slightly suspicious, Harvey said, “But how do I know you’ll catch me?” Mackay’s father comforted the young lad by saying, “Because I’m your father and I said I would catch you.” Reassured, Harvey slid to the end of the banister—only to land in a tumble on the carpeted floor. As Harvey rose to his feet, his father announced:

  Never trust anyone in business; not even your own father.

  Business is business.

  According to Mackay, the lesson stuck. He went on to write:Since then, I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that any business arrangement I’m involved in is backed up with yards of paper that describe exactly who does what and what happens if they don’t. Understandings prevent misunderstandings. Banisters are great teaching devices.

  Like Dietrich, Peale, and Mackay, you may recall a moment from your past when the words of another person so affected your thinking that you were given a whole philosophy—to recall Dietrich’s lovely phrase—or at least an invaluable new perspective to help guide you through life. I can still recall—with great clarity, in fact—a number of inspiring things my high school guidance counselor, Mr. Critchfield Krug, said to me after I had lost my way as a teenager. Some became mantras for me, including a saying I first heard from him:

  Never be satisfied with less than your best.

  For many people, profound and life-altering admonitions have been found in the pages of a book written by someone who died centuries earlier. For Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, such a book was a 1647 work written by Baltasar Gracián. Gracián was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest who often ran afoul of his Jesuit superiors because of his “worldly” interests. His most popular work is now well known as The Art of Worldly Wisdom, but for more than two hundred years after its publication it was known only by its Spanish title: Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion). In the mid–1800s, Arthur Schopenauer fell in love with the book, ultimately translating it into German in 1861. A couple of years later, Friedrich Nietzsche—a young Schopenhauer fan—got hold of the German version of The Oracle. His curiosity must have been piqued when he read Schopenhauer’s glowing endorsement: “Absolutely unique . . . a book made for constant use—a companion for life.” From the moment Nietzsche began paging through the book, he was riveted. A few years later he wrote about it: “Europe has never produced anything finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety.”

  When one reads The Art of Worldly Wisdom today, it’s easy to understand why Gracián’s 1647 book had such great appeal to these two intellectual giants. In his presentation of 300 principles about living honorably and effectively, Gracián covered almost every aspect of life, including such predictable problems as insecure superiors, foolish colleagues, and enemies with malevolent motives. Even though The Art of Worldly Wisdom is often called “a book of maxims,” it is clear that the author viewed it as more of a rulebook for living. In laying out his rules, Gracián often spoke exhortatively:

  Always act as if others were watching.

  Always hold in reserve recourse to something better.

  Always have your mouth full of sugar to sweeten your words,

  so that even your ill-wishers enjoy them.

  If there is too much display today there will be nothing to show tomorrow.

  Always have some novelty with which to dazzle.

  But it was when Gracián expressed his rules dehortatively that they packed the most punch:

  Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.

  Never share your secrets with those greater than you.

  Never exaggerate. Exaggeration is a species of lying.

  Never do anything when you are in a temper,

  for you will do everything wrong.

  Never risk your reputation on a single shot,

  for if you miss the loss is irreparable.

  Never open the door to a lesser evil,

  for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

  For nearly half a century, I’ve been keeping—and progressively updating—a collection of quotations that remind me of important principles to guide my life. I originally copied them on 3-by-5-inch index cards that I tacked up on walls and bulletin boards, but I eventually transferred them to a computer file that I designated Words to Live By. There are several thousand quotations in my current WTLB file. All figures of speech are represented, including numerous neverisms from such influential thinkers as Albert Einstein:

  Never regard study as a duty.

  Never do anything against conscience

  even if the state demands it.

  Never lose a holy curiosity.

  The phrasing of this last quotation has always appealed to me, for it suggests an almost religious reverence that Einstein had for open-mindedly exploring every aspect of life. The remark came at the end of a fuller passage that went this way:One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

  Some of the most important words in my WTLB collection have come not from great thinkers or philosophers, but from classic works of fiction:

  Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

  These words, from William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847 classic Vanity Fair, are part of a passage that is still worth reading today, a century and a half after it was first written. In a comparison of the gentle and kindly Mrs. Bute Crawley and the contemptuous and ill-mannered Rawdon Crawley, the narrator says:The different conduct of these two people is pointed out respectfully to the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I say to such; never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man’s face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

  While the quotations to be found in this chapter may be viewed as examples of advice, it is my belief that they go beyond advice per se and enter into the realm of what used to be called pearls of wisdom. In the next chapter, we’ll turn our attention to advice-only admonitions, but in the remainder of this chapter we’ll continue looking at those that can best be described as words to live by.

  Never do harm, and whenever possible do good.ISABEL ALLENDE, from her 2008

  memoir The Sum of Our Days

  Never esteem anything as of advantage to you

  that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.MARCUS AURELIUS

  This was an entry in the diary of the most philosophically inclined of all Roman emperors. The personal journal of Marcus Aurelius was discovered after his death at age fifty-eight in A.D. 180, and eventually published under the title Meditations. It went on to become one of history’s most influential books, and almost every world leader has had at least a passing acquaintance with it. It also contains this admonition:

  Never let the future disturb you.

  You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons

  of reason which today arm you against the present.

  Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.J. M. BARRIE, in a 1922 speech

  Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life.EDWARD L. BERNAYS, quoted in Are You Happy?,

  a 1986 book by Dennis Wholey

  When I first came upon this sentiment, I was struck by the intriguing choice of words. But it was only after reading the entire observation that I realized how masterfully Bernays�
��the father of public relations—had expressed the danger of “either-or” thinking when applied to work and play. Here’s the entire observation (which, by the way, is commonly misattributed to Pablo Picasso):Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

  Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard

  than anybody expects of you . . .

  Never excuse yourself to yourself. Never pity yourself.

  Be a hard master to yourself, but lenient to everybody else.HENRY WARD BEECHER,

  in an 1878 letter to his son Herbert

  In the letter, written as Herbert was leaving home for the first time to take a job, a concerned Beecher also implored his son to work on a problem that had become worrisome:

  I beseech you to correct one fault—severe speech of others;

  never speak evil of any man, no matter what the facts may be.

  Never forget that Life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived