Neverisms

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 ROWBOTTON, 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