by Mardy Grothe
When you’re angry, never put it in writing.
It’s like carving your anger in stone.ESTÉE LAUDER
Never saw off the branch you are on,
unless you are being hanged from it.STANISLAW JERZY LEC,
in Unkempt Thoughts (1962)
Never dream with thy hand on the helm.HERMAN MELVILLE
The words come from Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s 1851 classic Moby-Dick. He meant the words literally, but the passage has drifted in a metaphorical direction over the years—now generally meaning that you should never let your mind wander when performing a task that requires your full attention.
Never be a bear on the United States.J. P. MORGAN
In this observation, the legendary banker and financier suggested it was far better to be bullish on America. In investment circles, a bear is someone who anticipates a decline in the market, while a bull purchases stock in the belief that the market will expand. There is no agreement on the precise origin of these terms, but they’ve been used for well over a century to describe expanding and contracting markets. If you’re like me and have had trouble remembering which one is which, here’s a mnemonic device I’ve found helpful: a bull market is a full market; a bear market is a bare market.
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, in London à la Mode (1966)
Never carry your shotgun or your knowledge at half-cock.AUSTIN O’MALLEY, in Keystones of Thought (1914)
Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.CLEMENTINE PADDLEFORD, quoting her mother
In the mid–1900s, Paddleford was one of America’s most influential food editors. Her 1960 book How America Eats is a culinary classic. In her 1958 memoir A Flower for My Mother, she fondly recalled her childhood and this backbone advice from her mother.
Never throw mud.
You may miss your mark; but you must have dirty hands.JOSEPH PARKER, in Hidden Springs (1864)
Since the Roman Empire, throwing dirt has been a metaphor for hurling scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges against an adversary. The ancient practice was even promoted in a Latin proverb: “Throw plenty of dirt; some of it will be sure to stick.” In The New Language of Politics (1968), William Safire wrote that dirt-throwing began to be called mud-throwing or mudslinging shortly after the Civil War. It’s possible that Parker, an English clergyman, was partly responsible for the shift in terms. In a sermon from his 1864 book, he strongly advised against descending to personal attacks, saying, “Nothing is easier than to use bad names; but bad names are bad arguments.”
Never date a woman you can hear ticking.MARK PATINKIN, on dating women who
are watching their biological time clocks
Never despise a bridge which carries you safely over.AFRICAN PROVERB
Proverbs from many nations and cultural traditions have been expressed metaphorically. Here are a few more, along with their likely place of origin.
Never try to catch two frogs with one hand.(China)
Never show your teeth unless you’re prepared to bite.(France)
Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.(Ireland)
Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot.(Ireland)
Never take the antidote before the poison.(Italy)
Never let anyone see the bottom of your purse or your mind.(Italy)
Never bet the farm.AMERICAN PROVERB
To “bet the farm” is a longstanding metaphor about risking everything on a gamble. In 2006, Anthony Iaquinto and Stephen Spinelli borrowed the expression to title a book: Never Bet the Farm: How Entrepreneurs Take Risks, Make Decisions—and How You Can, Too. In their book, the two men laid out fifteen principles of entrepreneurial success. One was “Never bet the farm,” and another was “Never reach for a gallon when you only need a quart.” This latter saying could be interpreted in a number of ways, but Iaquinto and Spinelli applied it to setting goals, especially financial goals. They wrote:Why set overly ambitious goals that substantially increase your chances of being disappointed, regretful, and angry? Instead, set more modest goals that have a greater chance for success—goals that could still lead to your financial independence and will definitely make you a great deal more satisfied.
Never let yesterday use up too much of today.AMERICAN PROVERB
This warning about being preoccupied with the past is commonly attributed to the American humorist Will Rogers, but it has never been found in his speeches or writings.
Never spur a willing horse.AMERICAN PROVERB
A willing horse does not need to be spurred because it will get us to our destination without any extra prodding. Likewise with employees and others who are doing things for us.
Never buy a pig in a poke.ENGLISH PROVERB
Today, almost everyone knows that this means “Never purchase something before you examine it,” but relatively few know the origins of the saying. It dates to the fifteenth century, when a baby pig was often placed into a woven cloth sack—called a poke—after it had been sold at market. Some unscrupulous sellers, however, would surreptitiously slip a large cat into the poke, hoping to swindle unsuspecting buyers. For more than five hundred years, the expression to buy a pig in a poke has meant to buy something without investigation or examination. However, when a savvy—or suspicious—buyer insisted on seeing what was in the seller’s poke, the transaction would be completed, or not, depending on whether a piglet or a cat was in the bag. By the way, the popular expression about letting a cat out of the bag, which means “revealing a secret,” can also be traced to the practice of trying to sell a cat instead of a pig in a poke.
Never fall out with your bread and butter.ENGLISH PROVERB
For more than a century, “bread and butter” has been a metaphor to describe the way one makes a living.
Never make two bites of a cherry.ENGLISH PROVERB
If it’s a small job, do it all at once, according to this centuries-old saying. In English Proverbs Explained (1967), Ronald Ridout and Clifford Witting explained the proverb this way: “If a job can be done in one short spell of work, don’t break off and come back to it later.”
Never put your hand into a wasp’s nest.ENGLISH PROVERB
The message behind this saying shows up in a parental warning many of us heard when we were growing up: “Never go looking for trouble or you just might find it.”
Never foul your own nest.ENGLISH PROVERB
This saying advises against engaging in sexual affairs or romantic intrigue at one’s home or place of employment. It was well established in England by the nineteenth century (an 1870 piece in the Chambers Journal said, “ ‘Never foul your own nest’ is a homely English proverb”). As often happens with English proverbs that get picked up in America, the saying evolved into two more indelicate U.S. versions: “Never shit where you eat” and “Never shit on your own doorstep.” Two milder versions that have also become popular in America are:
Never make honey where you make your money.
Never buy your candy where you buy your groceries.
Never burn a penny candle looking for a half-penny.IRISH PROVERB
The closest equivalent to this proverb would be: “Never throw good money after bad.”
Never bray at an ass.RUSSIAN PROVERB
The underlying principle is: never stoop to your adversary’s level. A similar maxim goes this way: “Never get in a shouting match with a damn fool. Someone may walk in and not know which one is which.”
Never offer your hen for sale on a rainy day.SPANISH PROVERB
This saying stumped me at first, but when I discovered the meaning, it made perfect sense. If your hen’s feathers are wet, it will look small and unattractive rather than plump and healthy. The lesson? If you want to sell a product, present it in its best light.
Never fear shadows.
They simply mean there’s a light shining nearby.RUTH RENKEL, quoted in Reader’s Digest (1983)
Never build a case against yourself.ROBERT RO
WBOTTON, quoted by Norman Vincent Peale
in You Can If You Think You Can (1987)
Never cut a tree down in the wintertime.ROBERT H. SCHULLER, in Hours of Power (2004)
Schuller was a child when his father told him about how, one winter, he sawed down a tree he thought was dead. When spring came, new sprouts emerged from the trunk, teaching him an important lesson. Schuller explained it this way:
Never make a negative decision in the low time.
Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods.
Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.
Never let go of the fiery sadness called desire.PATTI SMITH, from a poem in her 1978 book Babel
Never thrust your own sickle into another’s corn.PUBLILIUS SYRUS
This ancient maxim is often viewed as a sexual metaphor, in part because of the word thrust and also because early translations said “another man’s corn.” To the best of my knowledge, though, it was originally offered as a straightforward “thou shalt not steal” injunction.
Never be so simple as to seek for happiness:
it is not a bird that you can put in a cage.
By so doing you will only clip its wings.CAITLIN THOMAS
Thomas, the widow of Dylan Thomas, wrote this in her Not Quite Posthumous Letter to My Daughter (1963), a book written to her eighteen-year-old daughter. She continued:If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness. And, when it comes, you probably won’t recognize it, till afterwards.
Never wound a snake; kill it.HARRIET TUBMAN, in 1862, on the advice she would
give to President Lincoln on the institution of slavery
“Never Offer Your Heart to Someone Who Eats Hearts”ALICE WALKER, title of 1978 poem
Never don’t do nothin’ which isn’t your fort,
for ef you do, you’ll find yourself
splashin’ around in the canawl, figgeratively speakin’.ARTEMUS WARD
Artemus Ward was a popular nineteenth-century humorist who numbered Abraham Lincoln among his fans. Ward was also believed to have served as an early inspiration for Mark Twain. He was noted for speaking and writing in a phonetic dialect.
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness,
but come down into the green valleys of silliness.LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Never commit “the sin of the desert.”ZIG ZIGLAR, in Ziglar on Selling (1993)
“The sin of the desert” is knowing where the water is but not sharing the information.
eighteen
Never Use a Long Word Where a Short One Will Do
The Literary Life
On a chilly November morning in 1867, the fifty-eight-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. delivered a lecture to students at the Harvard Medical School. Professor Holmes, who had received a medical degree from Harvard three decades earlier, had been on the faculty since 1847, and he served as dean of the school since 1853.
A respected figure in the field of medicine, Holmes was even better known in the general culture for his literary efforts. He first received national attention in 1830 as a twenty-one-year-old Boston lawyer (he would soon abandon his plans for a legal career and decide to become a physician). Outraged at learning that U.S. Navy authorities were planning to decommission and dismantle the USS Constitution, he wrote a poem in protest and sent it to a Boston newspaper. Titled “Old Ironsides,” the poem was soon reprinted in newspapers all over America. Almost overnight, Holmes’s impassioned poetic effort mobilized public sentiment against the navy’s plans, and the ship was ultimately preserved as a historic monument. Today, 180 years after the poem’s publication, the USS Constitution, still affectionately known as “Old Ironsides,” is the world’s oldest commissioned ship still in service. And the historic vessel lives on in large part as a result of the efforts of this one man.
In 1858, while teaching full-time at the medical school, Holmes came out with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, a collection of essays originally written for The Atlantic Monthly. The book was enthusiastically received by critics, who began describing Holmes as a major American essayist. It was also a great commercial success, selling 10,000 copies in the first three days of publication. A sequel, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, appeared two years later, and a third volume, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, followed in 1872.
In his 1867 lecture, Holmes was speaking about medicine, but his experiences as a writer clearly informed his ideas. Near the end of his talk, he urged the students to avoid pretension and to describe things simply and plainly:
I would never use a long word . . .
where a short one would answer the purpose.
I know there are professors in this country who “ligate” arteries.
Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.
Over the following decades, the notion of using short words instead of long ones became a rule of thumb for writers, but it was turned into a formal rule of writing in April 1946, when Horizon magazine published an essay titled “Politics and the English Language,” by the English writer George Orwell.
At the time, Orwell was moderately well known in England as a journalist and essayist, but he was not even close to achieving the international fame that would come three years later with the publication of his dystopian classic 1984. Even though his satirical novel Animal Farm had been published the previous year in England, it was still unclear how successful the book would be (an American edition was in production, but not yet out).
After the success of 1984, Orwell became an internationally famous writer, and renewed interest was paid to his earlier writings, including the 1946 Horizon essay, a powerful polemic on the abuse of language and the effect of bad writing. In the piece, Orwell argued that sloppy thinking and bad writing not only go together, they mutually reinforce one another:A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
The article concluded with six rules for writers, now commonly called “Orwell’s Six Rules of Writing.” Four were expressed neveristically, and one can be traced back to that famous 1867 lecture from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes:1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Orwell’s essay has become such an integral part of literary culture that it’s now almost impossible to imagine a professional writer who is not familiar with it. Indeed, the second rule has become so popular that it’s been parodied many times (as in William Safire’s famous spin-off, discussed in the oxymoronic & paradoxical neverisms chapter).
In offering his thoughts about writing mistakes and missteps, Orwell was continuing a longstanding tradition. Rules of composition have been an integral part of literary culture for centuries. As commonly happens with rules, however, they are sometimes taken too far. In the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for teachers and editors to proclaim:
Never end a sentence with a preposition.
This injunction has frustrated many young people learning the craft of writing, and it has infuriated many experienced ones who found their drafts “corrected” by editors slavishly following the rule. When Winston Churchill was reviewing the edited manuscript of one of his books, he discovered that a punctilious editor had reworded one of his sentences
so that it did not end in a preposition. There are differing versions of exactly what Churchill scrawled in the margin as a note to the editor, but all are phrased in such a way that it didn’t end in a preposition, including: “This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”
Happily, that old rule has been relegated to the dustbin of history. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White described it all quite nicely in their classic writing guide The Elements of Style (1999):Years ago, students were warned not to end a sentence with a preposition; time, of course, has softened that rigid decree. Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than anywhere else.
Another writing rule that no longer governs is one that many readers of a certain age will recall from their high school days:
Never begin a sentence with the word “but.”
Like the preposition rule, this one is now also considered obsolete. In his 1976 classic On Writing Well, William Zinsser put it this way:Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.