Neverisms Read online

  Consult your body. Is it hungry?

  Never bear more than one trouble at a time.

  Some people bear three kinds—

  all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.EDWARD EVERETT HALE

  Never wear a hat that has more character than you do.MICHAEL HARRIS, former owner

  of Paul’s Hat Works in San Francisco

  Never take the advice of someone

  who has not had your kind of trouble.SYDNEY J. HARRIS, in Strictly Personal (1953)

  Harris added: “It is sure to be based on the false assumption that what sounds ‘reasonable’ will turn out to be the right solution.”

  Never sing a blues that isn’t from personal experience,

  something you haven’t lived through.SAM “LIGHTNIN’ ” HOPKINS, quoted by Joel Mabus

  Never bend your head.

  Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.HELEN KELLER, advice to a five-year-old blind girl

  Never be entirely idle;

  but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating,

  or endeavoring something for the common good.THOMAS À KEMPIS, from The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)

  Never depend on anyone except yourself.JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, in his Fables (1668)

  Never let an enemy get set. . . .

  Never let him move from a secure position

  or give him time to move his pieces on the chessboard.LOUIS L’AMOUR, in The Warrior’s Path (1980)

  Never tell evil of a man if you do not know it for a certainty.JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER

  Lavater, an eighteenth-century Swiss theologian, added, “And if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, “Why should I tell it?”

  Never open the door to those who

  open them even without your permission.STANISLAW JERZY LEC, in Unkempt Thoughts (1962)

  This is an important reminder that we should never give extra assistance to those who clearly don’t have our best interests in mind. It’s similar to a proverbial saying about refusing to provide assistance to wrong-doers: “Never hold a candle for the devil.”

  Never perform for your family.

  They either laugh too hard or not at all.JAY LENO, in Jay Leno’s How to Be the Funniest Kid in

  the Whole Wide World (or Just in Your Class) (2007)

  Leno added: “Comedy is the only profession where love from a stranger is better than love from a family member. You need to perform for strangers to see if you’re really funny. If they laugh and cheer, it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

  Never undertake anything unless you have

  the heart to ask Heaven’s blessing on your undertaking.G. C. LICHTENBERG

  Never let your correspondence fall behind.ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Lincoln jotted down this thought while preparing for a law lecture in 1850. He began by writing, “The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”

  Never treat time as if you had an unlimited supply.OG MANDINO, in A Better Way to Live (1990)

  This appeared in a New York Times bestseller that was subtitled: Og Mandino’s Own Personal Story of Success. Mandino laid out seventeen rules that he used to transform his life from a derelict alcoholic on the brink of suicide into one of history’s most famous inspirational speakers. Here is more advice from the book:

  Never be too big to ask questions,

  never know too much to learn something new.

  Never skimp on that extra effort, that additional few minutes,

  that soft word of praise or thanks,

  that delivery of the very best that you can do.

  Never allow the pains, hurdles, and handicaps of the moment

  to poison your attitude and plans for yourself and your future.

  You can never win when you wear the ugly cloak of self-pity.

  Never again clutter your days or nights

  with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time

  to accept a real challenge when it comes along.

  Never sound excited.EDWARD R. MURROW

  Murrow said this to a young broadcast journalist during WWII. He added that it was also essential to keep news reports simple, but not too simple:Imagine yourself at a dinner table back in the United States with a local editor, a banker, and a professor talking over coffee. You try to tell what it was like, while the maid’s boyfriend, a truck driver, listens from the kitchen. Try to be understood by the truck driver while not insulting the professor’s intelligence.

  Never befriend the oppressed

  unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.OGDEN NASH, a “cardinal rule”

  in Everyone But Thee and Me (1962)

  Never advance anything which cannot be proved

  in a simple and decisive fashion.LOUIS PASTEUR

  Never talk defeat.

  Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

  Never let anyone keep you contained

  and never let anyone keep your voice silent.ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR., quoting his father, in Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1971)

  Never give advice in a crowd.ARAB PROVERB

  Never write a letter when you are angry.CHINESE PROVERB

  This advice has been offered for centuries, but in recent years it has been given a neat twist. Go ahead and write a letter when you’re angry, it is now said, but never mail it. The act of composing a letter can clarify important thoughts and feelings. And once they are expressed—even in a letter that is never sent—they tend to dissipate.

  Never give advice unless asked.GERMAN PROVERB

  Never ask of him who has, but of him who wishes you well.SPANISH PROVERB

  Never pass up a garage sale. But pass up most of what’s there.JANE BRYANT QUINN

  This appeared in Quinn’s 1997 revision of her personal finance classic Making the Most of Your Money. She added: “It’s hard to believe what people buy at garage sales and then chuck into their own garages.” She also wrote: “Never deposit cash in an ATM. It’s impossible to prove how much you put into the envelope.”

  Never begin the day until it is finished on paper.JIM ROHN, on the importance of formally planning

  out one’s day in writing before it actually begins

  Never be bothered by what people say,

  as long as you know in your heart you are right.ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  This was Mrs. Roosevelt’s reply when she was asked by Dale Carnegie how she dealt with unjust criticism. She was quoting her Aunt Bye (Theodore Roosevelt’s sister).

  Never do it for the money. I mean it.ROGER ROSENBLATT

  This appeared in Rules for Aging (2000), a delightful little book containing fifty-six rules for living, along with Rosenblatt’s wry and witty explanations. Here are a few more:

  Never miss an opportunity to do nothing.

  Never bring news of slander to a friend.

  (Yes, he cites Twain as the original author of the sentiment)

  Never work for anyone more insecure than yourself.

  If you want to keep a man honest, never call him a liar.

  Never go to a cocktail party, and, in any case,

  do not stay more than 20 minutes.

  Never think on vacation.

  Something odd happens to the mind when it is on holiday.

  Never assume the obvious is true.WILLIAM SAFIRE

  Never pay attention to what critics say.

  Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic.JEAN SIBELIUS

  Never give way to melancholy;

  resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.SYDNEY SMITH

  Never let a drunk catch your eye.JOHN STEINBECK

  Steinbeck was quoted as saying this in J. Bryan III’s 1985 book Merry Gentleman (and One Lady). It’s now often called “Steinbeck’s code for social survival.”

  Never be afraid to try something n
ew.

  Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.ABIGAIL VAN BUREN (“Dear Abby”)

  This appeared in a 2001 Dear Abby column. The second portion was not original to Van Buren; she was simply passing along a saying that had recently become popular.

  I don’t really understand the purpose of flat shoes—

  my top tip for any girl would have to be:

  Never be seen out of the house in anything other than heels.DONATELLA VERSACE

  Never say “I.” Always say “we.”DIANA VREELAND, from her 1980 book Allure

  Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise.

  View life as a continuous learning experience.DENIS WAITLEY

  Waitley, like so many popular motivational speakers, is fond of expressing advice in neveristic ways. Here are a few more from him:

  Never assume you have all the answers.

  Never take a seat in the back of the room. Winners sit up front.

  Above all, never forget the real secret of mental toughness

  is contingency planning.

  Never argue at the dinner table,

  for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.RICHARD WHATELY

  Whately was a nineteenth-century English economist and theologian who served for a time as the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He had a reputation as a great talker, a keen wit, and a formidable foe in disputes and arguments. It was said of him that he loved a good debate—except when he was at dinner.

  Never hurry and never worry!E. B. WHITE, in Charlotte’s Web (1952)

  This is one of the best-known pieces of advice that Charlotte gave to her friend Wilbur, a small pig who feared he was going to become the main dish for Christmas dinner.

  Never let the urgent-but-unimportant

  crowd out the important-but-not-urgent.H. EVAN WOODHEAD, in The Power of Paradox (2006)

  Describing the importance of setting priorities, Woodhead concluded: “Do not do the unimportant-and-not-urgent at all unless there is nothing else to do.”

  Never wait for trouble.CHARLES “CHUCK” YEAGER

  A 1986 issue of Air & Space, a publication of the Smithsonian Institution, included a feature on Yeager titled “At Mach 1.5 or 55 MPH, Never Wait for Trouble.” Ever since, the saying has been associated with Yeager, a U.S. Air Force pilot who, in 1947, became the first man to travel faster than sound. The admonition is similar to an English proverb that dates to the seventeenth century: “Never meet trouble half-way.”

  Never stop until your good becomes better,

  and your better becomes the best.FRANK ZAPPA

  This is one of Zappa’s most frequently quoted lines. So far, though, I’ve been unable to verify the quotation.

  Never charge anything on a credit card

  that you don’t have money to pay for.ZIG ZIGLAR, in his 2006 book Better Than Good:

  Creating a Life You Can’t Wait to Live

  This was the first in “a three-part plan for staying out of credit card debt” that Ziglar got from financial counselor Larry Burkett. Financial writer Robert G. Allen set an even higher bar in his 1983 book Creating Wealth: “Never borrow money to pay for a car, a boat, or a stereo. If you do have to buy such items, pay cash.”

  Never say bad things about yourself;

  especially, never attribute to yourself irreversible negative traits,

  like “stupid,” “ugly,” “uncreative,” “a failure,” “incorrigible.”PHILIP ZIMBARDO, in Shyness (1990)

  four

  Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Do Today

  Classic Neverisms

  Philip Dormer Stanhope, born in London in 1694, was groomed from childhood to become an English gentleman. When his father died in 1726, the thirty-two-year-old Lord Stanhope, as he was then known, assumed the hereditary title of his father, becoming the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He was soon sworn in as a member of the House of Lords, a position he had long desired. Over the next half century, Lord Chesterfield became one of England’s most prominent figures. He is remembered to history, though, not for his public service, but for three decades’ worth of letters he wrote to his son.

  In 1737, Chesterfield began writing letters to five-year-old Philip Stanhope, his only child. The boy was the result of an extramarital affair Chesterfield had with a French governess who lived in London. The child’s illegitimate status almost guaranteed that he would never be accepted by upper-class society, but Chesterfield arranged for him to be educated at the prestigious Westminster School. When Philip turned five, Chesterfield wrote him a letter about what to expect at school and what he might do to increase his chances of success. The letter-writing format proved so appealing to Lord Chesterfield that, over the next thirty-one years, he wrote his son more than a thousand letters, offering detailed advice on etiquette and good manners, observations about life and love, and insights about human nature that might advance a young gentleman’s career.

  The correspondence continued until 1768, when young Stanhope died unexpectedly of edema (then called dropsy) at age thirty-six. Just before the funeral, the grieving father learned of his son’s marriage to a lower-class woman and, even more shockingly, of the existence of two grandsons. Chesterfield took the news with typical English aplomb, treating his son’s wife with courtesy and vowing to provide for the education of his grandchildren.

  After Chesterfield’s death in 1773, extracts of his will were published in The Gentleman’s Magazine. While the wealthy nobleman provided for his grandsons, he left nothing to his son’s widow, Eugenia Stanhope. Distraught over an uncertain future, Mrs. Stanhope realized she had only one thing of value: a chest full of letters her husband had received from his famous father. She approached a respected London publisher, James Dodsley, and showed him her cache. In 1774, a year after Chesterfield’s death, Dodsley’s firm published Letters to His Son: On the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman. Once again, Lord Chesterfield was the talk of the town, as Londoners of every social class eagerly discussed the contents of a lengthy series of letters that were never intended for public consumption.

  While London’s literary society admired the elegant way in which Chesterfield expressed himself, most Londoners were captivated by the racier advice, which included a recommendation that the son have affairs with upper-class English married women in order to improve his manners as well as his social standing. Dr. Samuel Johnson, long a Chesterfield critic, famously wrote that the letters “teach the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master.”

  Despite Dr. Johnson’s dim view, many of Chesterfield’s rules of conduct and observations about life now enjoy an exalted status among word and language lovers. You’ll find other contributions from Lord Chesterfield in other chapters, but perhaps his most famous words appeared in a 1749 letter:

  Know the true value of time;

  snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

  No Idleness; no laziness; no procrastination;

  never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

  Chesterfield returned to the same theme in a 1754 letter:

  Be alert and diligent in your little concerns;

  never procrastinate,

  never put off till tomorrow what you can do today;

  and never do two things at a time.

  Warnings about delaying today’s tasks until tomorrow had appeared centuries before Chesterfield wrote his letters. The basic idea showed up in one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the late fourteenth century. By 1616, something very close to the modern version (“Deferre not untill to morrow, if thou canst do it to day”) was included in Adages, a collection of proverbial sayings by the English writer Thomas Draxe. By the eighteenth century the basic notion was so well established that a 1757 issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack advised, “Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day.” To my knowledge, though, Lord Chesterfield was the first person to begin the admonition with the phrase neve
r put off till tomorrow. His more compelling—and modern-sounding—version of the saying is the one that finally took hold and ultimately became the preferred way to express the thought. It is now regarded as a quotation classic.

  The dictionary defines classic as “Belonging to the highest rank or class.” Just as there are classic cars, films, songs, and books, there are classic quotations—and Lord Chesterfield’s creation deserves the appellation. One of the best ways to determine if a quotation has achieved such a status is to examine the number of parodies and spin-offs it has inspired. On this criterion, Chesterfield’s line has few rivals. So far, I’ve identified more than three dozen attempts to piggyback on the original thought. Here are a few of my favorites:

  Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.HUMPHREY BOGART, as Charlie Allnut, in The African Queen (1951), adapted from the C. S. Forester novel; screenplay by James Agee

  There is a maxim, “Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.”

  This is a maxim for sluggards. A better reading of it is,

  “Never do to-day what you can as well do to-morrow;”

  because something may occur to make you regret your premature action.AARON BURR, quoted in James Parton’s

  Life and Times of Aaron Burr (1858)