Never talk about your sex life.
And no matter how tempted you are,
never talk about having a fight with your mate.
Your mother will automatically hate that person forever.
Never make a pretty woman your wife.ROARING LION (Rafael de Leon),
from his 1933 song “Ugly Woman”
If this sentiment sounds familiar, it’s probably because you remember Jimmy Soul’s hit calypso song of 1963, “If You Wanna Be Happy.” The key lyric from the song is:If you wanna be happyFor the rest of your life,Never make a pretty woman your wife,So from my personal point of view,Get an ugly girl to marry you.
The song was written in 1933 by Rafael de Leon, a calypso artist from Trinidad who performed under the stage name Roaring Lion. First recorded in 1934, it became the first calypso song to be performed in a Hollywood film, Happy Go Lucky, in 1943. Liberace performed the song on his television variety show in the 1950s and, in a big surprise to me, the actor Robert Mitchum recorded it on a calypso album he made in 1957. The song’s greatest success, though, came in 1963, when Jimmy Soul’s version sold more than a million records on its way to the top of the charts.
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife;
she has thought much worse things about you.JEAN ROSTAND, originally in Le Mariage (1927)
The only moral lesson which is suited for a child—
the most important lesson for every time of life—is this:
“Never hurt anybody.”JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
In the history of ethical instruction, it’s hard to find a moral principle that has been better expressed. It comes from Emile (1762), Rousseau’s classic work on the nature of education. Rousseau considered the book to be “the best and most important of all my writings.” Even though it was written 250 years ago, Emile contains many portions that have a contemporary relevance—like this passage on explaining things to children in words they can understand:
Never show a child what he cannot see.
Since mankind is almost unknown to him . . .
bring the man down to the level of the child.
While you are thinking what will be useful to him when he is older,
talk to him of what he knows he can use now.
Or this one on making religious instruction an enjoyable experience:
When you teach religion to little girls,
never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty,
and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers.
While never hurt anybody was the principle by which Rousseau thought people should lead their lives, he formulated an additional rule to guide those entrusted with the instruction of children. He called it the first rule of instruction, and suggested that all teaching practices were subordinate to it: “Never tell a lie.”
Never advertise what you don’t have for sale.MICHELE SLUNG, quoting her mother in
Momilies: As My Mother Used to Say (1985)
When Slung coined the term momilies for a book of homilies her mom had offered over the years, she didn’t tell anyone she was planning a book about them. But as soon as Slung got her first copy from the publisher, she hopped a plane to Pompano Beach, Florida, to hand-deliver a copy to her mom. After the book became a bestseller, Slung followed up with a 1986 sequel, More Momilies. Other neveristic momilies were:
Never nap after a meal or you’ll get fat.
Never lower yourself to act like the opposition.
Never use the plumbing during a thunderstorm.
Never get married simply because you think it is time to get married.WES SMITH, in Welcome to the Real World (1987)
Smith added: “Get married because you want to live with someone for the rest of your life, including weekends and holidays.”
Never give your money away to your children in your lifetime.JOHN D. SPOONER
As the managing director of investments at Smith Barney in Boston, Spooner explained his reasoning this way: “Always keep control. If you don’t, if you listen to the lawyers and the accountants, you’ll find yourself being led up the steps of the nursing home.”
Rule Number One: never come right out and say,
“My grandson Jimmy is a genius. Everybody says so.”
You’ll be talking into a dead mike.LYLA BLAKE WARD, in How to Succeed
at Aging Without Really Dying (2010)
eleven
Never Mention a No-Hitter While It’s in Progress
Sports
Baseball is often described as a game of tradition, and there is no baseball tradition more interesting than its many superstitions. One of the most fascinating emerges whenever a pitcher gets to the fifth or sixth inning without giving up a hit. At this stage of a game, the idea of a no-hitter is on everybody’s mind, but nobody says anything about it—until a hit is given up or the no-hit game is completed. In 1959, New York Times sportswriter Arthur Daly was one of the first people to formally use the expression unwritten rule to describe this practice. He wrote: “One of the oldest baseball superstitions is the unwritten rule that specifies no one is ever to mention a no- hitter that is being manufactured.”
