Neverisms

Never give the same speech once.HARVEY B. MACKAY, in Swim with the Sharks

Without Being Eaten Alive (1988)

Instead of creating a speech for every new occasion, and wasting valuable time in the process, Mackay recommended giving an existing winning speech to a new audience.

Never lose faith in your doubts.MARY MAGGI

Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.MARCEL MARCEAU

Never underexaggerate.ALAN MYNALL, quoting his father, Dennis Mynall

Growing up, English artist Alan Mynall said he often heard this admonition from his father. Of the advice—which turns the saying never overexaggerate on its head—Mynall said: “In two words, he offered probably the most subtle philosophy and potent advice ever given to a son.”

Never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.OGDEN NASH, a rule for bankers,

in The Face Is Familiar (1954)

Never believe anybody who says you can trust him implicitly.PATRICIA T. O’CONNER, in Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s

Guide to Better English in Plain English (2009)

This appeared in a section where O’Connor recommended giving the death sentence to certain cliches, like “trust implicitly.”

Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.P. J. O’ROURKE, in Modern Manners: An

Etiquette Guide for Rude People (1983)

This bit of twisted but clever logic appeared in a section called “Code of a Gentleman.” In a section on “drinking etiquette,” O’Rourke offered yet another paradoxical rule:

Never refuse wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion

that anyone who doesn’t drink must be an alcoholic.

Never live in the past; there’s no future in it.KALMAN PACKOUZ (with an assist from Charles Shores)

The first thing you do is to forget that I’m Black.Second, you must never forget that I’m Black.PAT PARKER

This fascinating couplet comes from Parker’s 1978 poem “For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend.” In the original poem “I’m” was rendered as “i’m.” To avoid confusion, I’ve taken the liberty of presenting it in the standard manner.

Do you wish men to speak well of you?

Then never speak well of yourself.BLAISE PASCAL, in Pensees (1658)

Never touch your eye but with your elbow.ENGLISH PROVERB

Since we cannot touch our eye with an elbow, this saying attempts to add some levity to the age-old advice about not touching your eye with anything at all. A related Chinese proverb advises: “Never pick your nose or your ear but with your elbow.”

Never trust a woman who mentions her virtue.FRENCH PROVERB

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.WILLIAM SAFIRE

This tongue-in-cheek recommendation was inspired by the George Orwell line, “Never use a long word when a short one will do.” In this parody, the rule is laid out and violated in the same breath. In a 1979 “On Language” column, Safire provided a number of these “perverse rules of grammar.” In Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage (1990), he provided a few more self-contradicting rules:

Never generalize.

Remember to never split an infinitive.

Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

Never use prepositions to end sentences with.

Never do anything virtuous until you minimize the damage you will do.EDGAR SCHNEIDER

Never speak ill of yourself! You can count on your friends for that.CHARLES-MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND

Typically, it is enemies who say bad things about us, so this quip from the famous nineteenth-century French statesman points to a fascinating human phenomenon—many of our friends derive a certain pleasure from either speaking ill of us themselves or passing along the negative comments of others. The Canadian journalist and humorist Bob Edwards was clearly inspired by Talleyrand’s observation when he wrote: “Never exaggerate your faults; your friends will attend to that.”

Never economize on luxuries.ANGELA THIRKELL, attributed

Never have children, only grandchildren.GORE VIDAL, quoting his grandfather

The line is often attributed directly to Vidal, but he heard it from his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma (the first blind U.S. senator). The senator had two children, Nina and Thomas, but he was not close with either of them. When Nina’s first marriage resulted in the birth of young Gore Vidal in 1925, the senator took a genuine interest in his first grandchild. As the years passed, when the precocious grandson served as both a reader and a guide for his grandfather, the two became very close. In Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995), Vidal wrote:His son and daughter had always been annoying to him and of little consequence to anyone else, while I, who read to him gladly, had been a treasure.

Sometime during his early school years, Vidal began to hear his grandfather offering the never have children, only grandchildren line to many people. After Vidal achieved fame, he always mentioned the origin of the saying, but many regarded it as so quintessentially Vidal that they found it easier to cite him as the author.

seventeen

Never Cut What You Can Untie

Metaphorical Neverisms

In a 1941 press conference in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa, Winston Churchill said: “The organ grinder still has hold of the monkey’s collar.” Churchill was describing the relationship between the German dictator Adolf Hitler and the Italian premier Benito Mussolini, and this was his way of saying that Mussolini was nothing more than Hitler’s lackey.

Churchill often expressed himself in figurative language, and the metaphor of the monkey and the organ grinder showed up frequently in his writings and remarks. In Safire’s Political Dictionary (1988) , William Safire reported that Churchill was once asked by the British ambassador to Rome if, during an upcoming visit to Italy, he was planning to raise an issue directly with Mussolini or with Mussolini’s foreign minister. Churchill replied:

Never hold discussions with the monkey

when the organ grinder is in the room.

When people speak metaphorically, they are communicating on two different levels simultaneously. In this case, Churchill was literally making an observation about monkeys and organ grinders while