Change careers, do something entirely different, but never retire.
The advice of these aging experts was echoed by Mel Brooks a year later. In a Modern Maturity interview, the seventy-two-year-old show business legend also said “Never retire,” but he gave the warning his own inimitable spin:Do what you do and keep doing it. But don’t do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, do fishing, do sexual activities, watch Fred Astaire movies. Then from Monday to Thursday, do what you’ve been doing all your life, unless it’s lifting bags of potatoes off the back of a truck. I mean, after eighty-five that’s hard to do. My point is: live fully and don’t retreat.
When people offer advice, especially when they consider the advice important, they often choose to express themselves in the strongest possible way: always do this or never do that. You will recall from the introductory chapter that a strongly worded directive to always do something is called an exhortation, while one to never do something is called a dehortation. In this chapter, we’ll focus our attention exclusively on dehortative advice. And much of that advice, like Safire’s never retire headline, has been delivered in only two or three words:
Never procrastinate.LORD CHESTERFIELD (Philip Dormer Stanhope)
Never argue.BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Never imitate.RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Never despair.
(In Latin, nil desperandum.)HORACE (first century B.C.)
Never neglect details.COLIN POWELL
Never prejudge anybody.NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF
Not all dehortations begin with the word never, but those that do stand out. “This is an especially important recommendation,” they seem to say, “so pay attention!” This kind of admonitory advice shows up with a special frequency in the world of manners and social etiquette. In her 1922 classic Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, Emily Post wrote that the first rule of etiquette, and the one upon which all others were based, was:
Never do anything that is unpleasant to others.
In Post’s view, all of the specific rules of etiquette “merely paraphrase or explain or elaborate” upon this overarching principle. She offered a host of elaborations in her book, many expressed in what grammarians describe as a passive voice:
A gentleman should never take his hat off with a flourish.
A lady never asks a gentleman to dance, or to go to supper with her.
Elbows are never put on the table while one is eating.
By contrast, she also offered many pronouncements in an active voice. And when she wrote in this way, her rules truly commanded our attention:
Never lose your temper.
Never say “Au revoir” unless you have been talking French,
or are speaking to a French person.
Never take more than your share—
whether of the road in driving your car,
of chairs on a boat or seats on a train, or food at the table.
Never so long as you live, write a letter
to a man—no matter who he is—that you would
be ashamed to see in a newspaper above your signature.
If you think rules of etiquette occur only in high society, then you would be mistaken. In all eras of history, and in every sector of life, thoughts about what one should never do have been very popular. Some of the best have come from the rough-and-tumble frontier world of nineteenth-century America—as in this 1880s piece of “Stagecoach Etiquette” from Nebraska’s Omaha Herald:
Never attempt to fire a gun or pistol while on the road.
The writer of the article continued:It may frighten the team, and the careless handling and cocking of the gun makes nervous people nervous. Don’t discuss politics and religion nor point out places on the road where horrible murders have been committed, if delicate women are among the passengers.
This stagecoach comportment rule is a nice reminder that the concept of etiquette has been applied to men as well as women. In 2003, Joe Kita and the editors of Men’s Health magazine wrote Guy Q: 1,305 Totally Essential Secrets You Either Know, or You Don’t Know. The book of “complex situations reduced to essential lessons” included a number of well-known secrets:
Never iron a tie.
Never eat food out of their original containers.
Never wear warm, freshly ironed pants: You’ll destroy the crease.
But many other rules were expressed for the very first time. For example, when meeting a celebrity for the first time:
Never refer to a celebrity’s past work.
He hears “I loved you in . . .” a thousand times a day.
Instead, ask what he’s currently working on. Celebs feed off this.
Or when ordering a drink at a bar:
Never say, “When you get a chance.”
That grates on bartenders’ nerves. “Hi” works best.
Or when eating at an outdoor restaurant:
Never eat food that’s displayed beneath one of those electric bug zappers.
When the little guys hit the electrical grid,
they explode, scattering bug guts for several feet.
And finally, when getting medical care at a clinic or a hospitaclass="underline"
Never trust a nurse with fake nails. Artificial fingernails harbor more bacteria than regular fingernails.
In the remainder of the chapter, I’m going to provide many more examples of strongly worded and unequivocally phrased advice. There will be no hemming and hawing in the pages to follow. In each and every case, you will be advised never to do something that the advice-giver believes will be contrary to your best interests, counterproductive, absolutely stupid, or downright dangerous.
Never express more than you feel.ANONYMOUS
This saying advises people against feigning an emotion they do not feel, or exaggerating one that they do. The advice is commonly given to actors and writers. In How to Say It, a 2001 writing and speaking guide, Rosalie Maggio wrote about the saying:“Never express more than you feel” is a good guideline, especially in thank-you letters, where we try to make up in verbiage what we lack in enthusiasm. A simple “thank you” is effective.
Much great neveristic advice has been anonymously authored. Here are some favorites:
Never eat unless you’re hungry.
Never sign something without first reading it.
Never let a computer know you’re in a hurry.
Never argue with an idiot.
They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
Never confuse your career with your life.