This was Mrs. Roosevelt’s reply when she was asked by Dale Carnegie how she dealt with unjust criticism. She was quoting her Aunt Bye (Theodore Roosevelt’s sister).
Never do it for the money. I mean it.ROGER ROSENBLATT
This appeared in Rules for Aging (2000), a delightful little book containing fifty-six rules for living, along with Rosenblatt’s wry and witty explanations. Here are a few more:
Never miss an opportunity to do nothing.
Never bring news of slander to a friend.
(Yes, he cites Twain as the original author of the sentiment)
Never work for anyone more insecure than yourself.
If you want to keep a man honest, never call him a liar.
Never go to a cocktail party, and, in any case,
do not stay more than 20 minutes.
Never think on vacation.
Something odd happens to the mind when it is on holiday.
Never assume the obvious is true.WILLIAM SAFIRE
Never pay attention to what critics say.
Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic.JEAN SIBELIUS
Never give way to melancholy;
resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.SYDNEY SMITH
Never let a drunk catch your eye.JOHN STEINBECK
Steinbeck was quoted as saying this in J. Bryan III’s 1985 book Merry Gentleman (and One Lady). It’s now often called “Steinbeck’s code for social survival.”
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.ABIGAIL VAN BUREN (“Dear Abby”)
This appeared in a 2001 Dear Abby column. The second portion was not original to Van Buren; she was simply passing along a saying that had recently become popular.
I don’t really understand the purpose of flat shoes—
my top tip for any girl would have to be:
Never be seen out of the house in anything other than heels.DONATELLA VERSACE
Never say “I.” Always say “we.”DIANA VREELAND, from her 1980 book Allure
Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise.
View life as a continuous learning experience.DENIS WAITLEY
Waitley, like so many popular motivational speakers, is fond of expressing advice in neveristic ways. Here are a few more from him:
Never assume you have all the answers.
Never take a seat in the back of the room. Winners sit up front.
Above all, never forget the real secret of mental toughness
is contingency planning.
Never argue at the dinner table,
for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.RICHARD WHATELY
Whately was a nineteenth-century English economist and theologian who served for a time as the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He had a reputation as a great talker, a keen wit, and a formidable foe in disputes and arguments. It was said of him that he loved a good debate—except when he was at dinner.
Never hurry and never worry!E. B. WHITE, in Charlotte’s Web (1952)
This is one of the best-known pieces of advice that Charlotte gave to her friend Wilbur, a small pig who feared he was going to become the main dish for Christmas dinner.
Never let the urgent-but-unimportant
crowd out the important-but-not-urgent.H. EVAN WOODHEAD, in The Power of Paradox (2006)
Describing the importance of setting priorities, Woodhead concluded: “Do not do the unimportant-and-not-urgent at all unless there is nothing else to do.”
Never wait for trouble.CHARLES “CHUCK” YEAGER
A 1986 issue of Air & Space, a publication of the Smithsonian Institution, included a feature on Yeager titled “At Mach 1.5 or 55 MPH, Never Wait for Trouble.” Ever since, the saying has been associated with Yeager, a U.S. Air Force pilot who, in 1947, became the first man to travel faster than sound. The admonition is similar to an English proverb that dates to the seventeenth century: “Never meet trouble half-way.”
Never stop until your good becomes better,
and your better becomes the best.FRANK ZAPPA
This is one of Zappa’s most frequently quoted lines. So far, though, I’ve been unable to verify the quotation.
Never charge anything on a credit card
that you don’t have money to pay for.ZIG ZIGLAR, in his 2006 book Better Than Good:
Creating a Life You Can’t Wait to Live
This was the first in “a three-part plan for staying out of credit card debt” that Ziglar got from financial counselor Larry Burkett. Financial writer Robert G. Allen set an even higher bar in his 1983 book Creating Wealth: “Never borrow money to pay for a car, a boat, or a stereo. If you do have to buy such items, pay cash.”
Never say bad things about yourself;
especially, never attribute to yourself irreversible negative traits,
like “stupid,” “ugly,” “uncreative,” “a failure,” “incorrigible.”PHILIP ZIMBARDO, in Shyness (1990)
four
Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Do Today
Classic Neverisms
Philip Dormer Stanhope, born in London in 1694, was groomed from childhood to become an English gentleman. When his father died in 1726, the thirty-two-year-old Lord Stanhope, as he was then known, assumed the hereditary title of his father, becoming the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He was soon sworn in as a member of the House of Lords, a position he had long desired. Over the next half century, Lord Chesterfield became one of England’s most prominent figures. He is remembered to history, though, not for his public service, but for three decades’ worth of letters he wrote to his son.
In 1737, Chesterfield began writing letters to five-year-old Philip Stanhope, his only child. The boy was the result of an extramarital affair Chesterfield had with a French governess who lived in London. The child’s illegitimate status almost guaranteed that he would never be accepted by upper-class society, but Chesterfield arranged for him to be educated at the prestigious Westminster School. When Philip turned five, Chesterfield wrote him a letter about what to expect at school and what he might do to increase his chances of success. The letter-writing format proved so appealing to Lord Chesterfield that, over the next thirty-one years, he wrote his son more than a thousand letters, offering detailed advice on etiquette and good manners, observations about life and love, and insights about human nature that might advance a young gentleman’s career.
The correspondence continued until 1768, when young Stanhope died unexpectedly of edema (then called dropsy) at age thirty-six. Just before the funeral, the grieving father learned of his son’s marriage to a lower-class woman and, even more shockingly, of the existence of two grandsons. Chesterfield took the news with typical English aplomb, treating his son’s wife with courtesy and vowing to provide for the education of his grandchildren.