Neverisms Page 8
Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.ALDOUS HUXLEY, from the character Lenina in Brave New World (1932)
Never put off till tomorrow
what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.MARK TWAIN, handwritten in an autographed card, December 1881
(and yes, in his note, a “the” is missing before the word “day”)
While Lord Chesterfield’s legendary piece of advice to his son is only a couple of hundred years old, some other classic neverisms go back to ancient times:
Never promise more than you can perform.PUBLILIUS SYRUS, in his Maxims (1st century B.C.)
This saying has a distinctly modern feel, though written more than two thousand years ago. Originally brought to Rome as the infant child of a Syrian slave couple, Publilius Syrus was a highly precocious boy who so impressed his Roman master that he was provided with a nobleman’s education and later freed. As a young man, he came out of nowhere to defeat the greatest orator of his time, Decimus Laberius, in an oratory contest. At the time, such contests were immensely popular, and the surprise victory made Syrus an overnight celebrity. He ultimately became one of the world’s most celebrated orators, but all that remains of his work are several hundred moral maxims, including such immortal lines as “A rolling stone gathers no moss” and “It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.” Syrus also gave the world one other classic neverism:
Never find your delight in another’s misfortune.
While many classic neverisms have ancient roots, others are surprisingly recent:
Never let ’em see you sweat.
This admonition to keep cool during challenging times first appeared in 1985 as the tagline of an advertising campaign for Gillette’s Dry Idea deodorant. The slogan was the brainchild of Phil Slott, the executive vice president of BBDO, the agency behind the campaign. Slott was a major player in the ad world at the time, the creator of such slogans as TWA’s “Up, Up, and Away” and the U.S. Navy’s “It’s Not Just a Job, It’s an Adventure.” When he began working on the campaign, Slott aimed for a theme that embodied his philosophy of advertising, which he expressed this way: “Saying what you won’t get is more compelling than saying what you will get.” Applying this to a deodorant campaign, he said:
When it comes to deodorants, saying “Never let ’em see you sweat,”
was more compelling than saying “You’ll always be dry.”
When the Dry Idea commercials began airing in 1985, they featured four American celebrities: fashion designer Donna Karan, model/actress Lauren Hutton, comedian Elaine Boosler, and Dan Reeves, the head coach of the Denver Broncos. In each commercial, the format was the same. The celebrities all began by saying that there were three “nevers” in their professions. Then, after mentioning the first two, they transitioned to the third one: “Never let ’em see you sweat.” The commercials were well-scripted, well-produced, and surprisingly well-acted. I think you will enjoy seeing the essential elements of all four commercials below:Well, there are three nevers in comedy. Never follow a better comedian.Never give a heckler the last word.And, no matter how bad a joke bombs,though it’s never happened to me personally, never let ’em see you sweat.ELAINE BOOSLER
There are three nevers to getting older in Hollywood. Never audition first thing in the morning. Never try to play a character half your age. And, even if your leading man is prettier than you are, never, never let ’em see you sweat.LAUREN HUTTON
There are three nevers in fashion design. Never confuse fad with fashion. Never forget it’s your name on every label. And, when showing your lines to the press,
never let ’em see you sweat.DONNA KARAN
I think there’s three nevers to being a winning coach. Never let the press pick your starting quarterback. Never take a last-place team lightly.
And, really, no matter what the score,
never let ’em see you sweat.DON REEVES
The Dry Idea commercials were among the most popular television ads of the era. By the mid–1990s, the series was retired and Gillette ultimately let its trademark for the slogan expire. Happily, those famous ads are still available for viewing. To see them, simply go to the neverisms menu of my website—www.drmardy.com—and select the “YouTube Neverisms” link.
A few years after the Dry Idea slogan first aired, another classic saying made its appearance on the pop-culture scene:
Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
This warning about being inadequately prepared for an upcoming conflict is so popular in America that it would be easy to think it has its origins in Wild West shootouts. The evidence suggests, however, that the expression was not used before 1987. So what happened in that year? The answer might surprise you.
In June of 1987, Paramount Pictures released The Untouchables, a Prohibition-era crime drama starring Kevin Costner as the famed FBI G-man Eliot Ness, and Sean Connery as an Irish-American Chicago beat cop named Jim Malone. With a screenplay by David Mamet and an all-star cast that included Robert De Niro as Capone and Andy Garcia as a rookie cop just out of the Police Academy, the film was one of the top-grossing movies of the year (it also won Connery an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role). In a scene early in the movie, as Ness and Malone discuss how to capture Capone, the street-smart Chicago cop played by Connery urges what might be called an overpowering strategy:You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get ’im. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the “Chicago” way! And that’s how you get Capone.
Later in the film, one of Capone’s henchmen breaks into Malone’s apartment and sneaks up behind him with an open switchblade knife in hand. Malone swings around, points a shotgun at the intruder, and says, “Isn’t that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gunfight.” Within months of the film’s release, the saying “Never bring a knife to a gunfight” began to appear all around the country. And while we don’t know the identity of the original author, it seems fairly certain that the inspiration for the saying came from that memorable scene.
While the actual words about bringing a knife to a gunfight were first uttered in The Untouchables, the underlying idea behind the saying appeared six years earlier in another famous Hollywood film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Released in 1981, the film contains one of the most famous sight gags in cinematic history. As Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) makes his way through a crowded marketplace in search of his missing love interest (Karen Allen), he is confronted by a menacing Arab warrior who brazenly threatens him with a scimitar. The situation looks grim, and Indiana appears to be stopped in his tracks by the knife-wielding adversary. How will he extricate himself from this dangerous predicament? The intrepid anthropologist, who looks a bit weary from his many recent adventures, looks over at his opponent, wipes his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, and then pulls out a revolver from under his shirttail, shooting his opponent dead. The scene still elicits howls of laughter, decades after the film was released, and no matter how many times it has been viewed.
Many fans of that famous Raiders of the Lost Ark scene do not know, however, that the notion of bringing a knife to a gunfight was reprised in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). In this film, the aging anthropologist teams up with a young and headstrong sidekick, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf). There is a lot of age-related banter between the costars, but perhaps the most memorable occurs when the two men are seated in a bar and are approached by a couple of menacing KGB agents. As the agents begin to make their move, Mutt clicks open a switchblade knife. When the two agents draw their guns, Indy whips out his pistol and shoots both men. And as he does, he says to Mutt, “Nice try, kid, but it looks like you brought a knife to a gunfight.”
Below you will find a number of additional neverisms that are so widespread and so deeply embedded in popular culture that they deserve to be called classics:
Never speak ill of the dead.
Never sweat the small stuff.
Never take “no” for an answer.
Never mix business with pleasure.
Never throw good money after bad.
Never spend money before you have it.
Never answer a question before it’s asked.
Never believe everything you hear, and
believe only half of what you see.
In the remainder of the chapter, I’ll present more neverisms that have also achieved a classic status. You’ll find many familiar quotations in the pages to follow. If you have a favorite that doesn’t appear in this chapter, there’s a good chance it will show up in another place in the book.
Never give up. Never give in. Never give out.
If there were a Hall of Fame for admonitions, these three would be among the first to gain admittance. Each one is closely associated with Winston Churchill, who used all of them—and whose very life personified them. (For Churchill’s most famous use of never give in, see the beginning of the multiple neverisms chapter.)
The most celebrated of the three, though, would have to be never give up. It was already a fairly popular saying in the early 1800s, when it was adopted as a motto by Martin F. Tupper, a young Englishman studying at Oxford. In 1838, Tupper wrote Proverbial Philosophy, a book of inspirational prose and poetry. Over the next decade, in expanded and revised editions, it became one of England’s bestselling books. Often described as one of Queen Victoria’s favorite books, it contained Tupper’s most famous poem, “Never Give Up!” A stirring tribute to the traits of persistence and perseverance, especially when tested by adversity, the poem became hugely popular in Europe as well as in America, where it was often reproduced without mention of the author’s name (a common practice at the time). Here is the final stanza:Never give up! If adversity presses,Providence wisely has mingled the cup,And the best counsel, in all your distresses,Is the stout watchword of Never give up!
Few poets ever live to see international acclaim, but by 1850 Tupper was one of the world’s best-known poets. When he made his first visit to the United States in 1851, he was treated as a celebrity everywhere he went, and even feted at a White House dinner given in his honor by President Millard Fillmore.
The highlight of Tupper’s American trip was not the White House dinner, though, but his trip to Philadelphia. He visited all of the city’s major institutions, including the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. While on a tour of the facility given by hospital superintendent Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, Tupper noticed that copies of his “Never Give Up!” poem—but without his name—had been tacked to the door of every patient’s room. Tupper was honored, of course, and surmised that Dr. Kirkbride was simply paying tribute to his famous guest. Not so, it turns out. In fact, Dr. Kirkbride had no idea that the man he was escorting through the hospital had anything to do with the poem. It was one of the highlights of Tupper’s life, and one he eventually described in My Life as an Author (1886). Speaking about Dr. Kirkbride, he wrote in his memoirs:He had seen the verses, anonymous, in a newspaper, and judging them a good moral dose of hopefulness even for the half insane, placed them on every door to excellent effect. When to his astonishment he found the unknown author before him, greatly pleased, he asked if I would allow the patients to thank me; of course I complied, and soon was surrounded by kneeling and weeping and kissing folks, grateful for the good hope my verses had helped them to.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Many people believe this saying has its origins in the tale about the Greeks and their Trojan horse, but it really stems from the age-old practice of estimating a horse’s age by examining its teeth. As horses—and humans—age, their gums begin to recede, giving the impression of longer teeth (hence the expression, “getting long in the tooth”). For several thousand years, horse traders have used this method to determine the value of a horse. The gift horse proverb is about good manners. When you receive a gift, you should be grateful for your good fortune instead of attempting to determine its value.
The proverb goes back to at least the Roman Empire. When Saint Jerome was writing biblical commentary around A.D. 400, he suggested that the saying was already very well established. In his Commentary on Epistle to Ephesians, he wrote: “Do not, as the common proverb says, look at the teeth of a gift horse.” In 1546, when John Heywood put together the first major collection of proverbs in the English language, he presented it this way: “No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth.” In his 1710 book Proverbs, Samuel Palmer presented the first neveristic version—and the one that has survived: Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Never change horses in midstream.
This famous warning about altering a course of action while in the process of carrying it out sometimes begins Never swap horses. While the original author is unknown, the person responsible for popularizing the sentiment is very well known. In an 1864 speech to the National Union League, Abraham Lincoln was speaking about the possibility of running for a second term as president when he said:I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that “it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”
Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.
This reminder about the value of seeing things from the perspective of others is often presented as a “Native American proverb,” and sometimes more specifically as an adage from the Sioux, Cherokee, or Nez Perce tribes. Never criticize is often used in place of never judge, and in some variations, the saying ends with until you have walked two moons in his moccasins. Almost all quotation researchers have concluded that this is not a genuine Native American saying, despite the common assertion. The underlying sentiment has also appeared in many other cultural traditions. In the Talmud, for example, Hillel advises, “Do not judge others until you stand in their place.”
Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
In his Great Political Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House (1998), Bob Dole wrote that Bill Clinton considered this the best advice he got after becoming president. The admonition to avoid unnecessary disputes with newspaper publishers and journalists has been attributed to Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, and many others, but the person who deserves credit for the original idea is Charles Brownson, a Republican congressman from Indiana (he served from 1951 till 1959). The first appearance of the saying in print was in the 1964 book My Indiana, in which author Irving Leibowitz wrote:Former Congressman Charles Brownson, Indianapolis Republican, used to say, “I never quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”
When phrased as an admonition, the saying often appears with the words “and newsprint by the ton” added at the end. In 1978, the Wall Street Journal presented another variant (“Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel”) and called it “Greener’s Law,” after William Greener, a deputy press secretary to President Gerald Ford. (Greener claimed authorship, but it’s now clear the saying preceded him.) When Tommy Lasorda was managing the Los Angeles Dodgers, he applied the concept to sportswriters when he said, “Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.”
Never cry over spilt milk.
This saying has long reminded people to waste no time shedding tears over past errors and mistakes. It has its origins in “No weeping for shed milk,” which first appeared in print in James Howell’s Proverbs (1659). The proverb evolved into “There’s no use crying over spilt milk,” and ultimately into the current saying. Some quotation anthologies cite Sophocles as the original author of the sentiment (“There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. Why bewail what is done and cannot be recalled?”), but there is no evidence he ever wrote such a thing. The saying has also inspired these parodies:
Never cry over spilt milk. It could have been whiskey.JAMES GARNER, quoting his dad in a Maverick episode
Never cry over spilt milk, because it might have been poisoned.W. C. FIELDS
Never judge a book by its cover.
According to the Yale Book of Quotations, this saying first appeared in exactly this way in an 1894 issue of a Minnesota newspaper, the Freeborn Country Standard. Its origins, however, can be traced to an eighteenth-century German proverb: “We must not judge of a book by its title page.” That saying was so well established in Europe in the late 1700s that everybody clearly understood what the English barrister William Roberts meant when he wrote (under a pseudonym) in a 1792 issue of The Looker-On: “I would as soon pretend to judge of a book by its title-page, as pronounce upon my neighbor’s disposition or genius from the shape of his features.” The saying Never judge a book by its cover literally means what it says, but it has also figuratively evolved to mean never judge by external appearances. The saying has inspired a popular spin-off from the writer Fran Lebowitz: “Never judge a cover by its book.”
Never send a boy to do a man’s job.
This saying, which began to enjoy great popularity in America in the early 1900s, is derived from an earlier English proverb: “Never send a boy on a man’s errand.” The origins of the English saying are obscure, but it was well established by the mid-nineteenth century (an 1854 article in Hunt’s Yachting Magazine said, “ ’Tis an old saying though and a true one, ‘Never send a boy on a man’s errand’ ”). The American proverb has appeared countless times in books, movies, and everyday conversation. It has also been creatively altered in some memorable ways. In his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often endeared himself to women’s groups when he cited “an old saying” that went this way: “Never send a boy to do a man’s job, send a lady.” You will find some other fascinating alterations of the proverb in the stage & screen chapter.