in The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Never completely encircle your enemy.
Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.ALEX HALEY, advice from the kintango, in Roots (1977)
Never pass up new experiences, Scarlett. They enrich the mind.MARGARET MITCHELL, from Rhett Butler,
in Gone with the Wind (1936)
Never think you’ve seen the last of anything.EUDORA WELTY, from Judge McKelva
in The Optimist’s Daughter (1972)
In my favorite fictional neverism, though, Mario Puzo writes in The Godfather (1969):
“Never get angry,” the Don had instructed.
“Never make a threat. Reason with people.”
This is a wonderful passage, ironically capturing the reasoning ability of Don Corleone, and rivaling his even-more-famous line about making someone an offer he couldn’t refuse. For reasons I will never understand, the passage never made it into the 1972 film adapted from the novel (even though the screenplay was written by Puzo). The two neverisms in the book are so perfectly suited for Marlon Brando that, had he actually delivered them in the film, they almost certainly would have become classics.
In several wonderful examples of serendipity, some neverisms have appeared in my life exactly when I needed them. When I was a graduate student, I was struck by how readily my fellow students became adherents of a particular school of psychological thought. Of course, the students were simply following the lead of so many professors, who seemed more than willing to proclaim themselves Freudians, Jungians, Rogerians, Skinnerians, or disciples of some other approach. At the time, such a choice seemed ill-advised and shortsighted, but I sometimes found myself wondering if I might be the one who was making a mistake.
Late in my graduate school career, I was reading Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!, the 1972 autobiography of A. S. Neill, the legendary Scottish educator who founded the progressive English school Summerhill (the title of Neill’s book, by the way, came from a rhyming nickname that he had been given by his students). In the book, I found some reassuring words:
My motto has always been:
Take from others what you want,
but never be a disciple of anyone.
In 1979, Norman Cousins, the longtime Saturday Review editor and legendary peace activist, was in the news once again, this time for Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient (1979), a dramatic story about how he overcame a painful and potentially life-threatening form of arthritis. After learning that one of his physicians had said, “I’m afraid we’re going to lose Norman,” Cousins figured he had nothing to lose and took control over his own treatment. He began watching Marx Brothers movies and Candid Camera videos every day, discovering that “ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect that would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” He slowly began to improve—greatly surprising his doctors—and began to view laughter as sedentary aerobic exercise. He also began to view the mind as an essential factor in a patient’s recovery. Ten years after his first book, he further explored the topic in Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit (1989).
When Cousins was writing these books, I confess that I was only moderately familiar with his story. But in 1995, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was an unsettling time, to be sure, and it was made a bit more unsettling because I would not know for two months, when my scheduled surgery was done, whether the cancer had metastasized or not. I began to learn as much as I could during that period, and one night was delighted to discover yet another neverism for my ever-growing collection:
Never deny a diagnosis,
but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.NORMAN COUSINS
Shortly after my surgery, I learned that there was no indication of metastasis. And now, more than fifteen years later, things are still looking good. Very good, indeed.
Some of history’s most famous neverisms have been offered in humorous, ironic, or mock-serious ways. Three classic examples come from a character in Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side:
Never play cards with a man called Doc.
Never eat at a place called Mom’s.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
The words came from a fictional character, but they appeared to reflect Algren’s personal views as well. He was fond of telling people that he learned these three rules from “an elderly Negro lady,” and he often added that they were the only rules he used to guide his life. He sometimes emphasized the last point this way: “And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.”
In most neverisms, people direct their cautionary warnings to someone else. Occasionally, though, we see people applying admonitions to themselves. In 1905, Mark Twain arrived at Delmonico’s restaurant in Manhattan to celebrate his seventieth birthday with 170 of his closest friends. Tucked into his pocket were notes he had made to guide him in the remarks he would be making later that evening. A few hours later, with the festivities in full gear, Twain finally rose to speak. What were his secrets to successful aging? The legendary humorist began by declaring his love of smoking and his abhorrence of exercise, saying, “I have achieved my seventy years . . . by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else.” He went on to say:
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep,
and never to refrain when awake.
A century ago, it was common for people to say I’ve made it a rule never to, but the use of such a phrase today is rare. It is a variation on the neverisms theme, though, and you will find a number of examples later in the book. Here are two more:
When I was younger,
I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch.
It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.WINSTON CHURCHILL, to King George VI,
said in 1952, when Churchill was seventy-seven years old
I’ve made it a rule never to drink by daylight
and never to refuse a drink after dark.H. L. MENCKEN
In another variation on the theme, people sometimes use the phrase one must never or one should never when offering principles of living or rules of conduct. As a general rule, these kinds of admonitions have a highfalutin quality, and they rarely pack the imperative punch of a straight-out neverism. But not always.
In a discussion of “Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Ayn Rand asserted that mankind’s basic virtue was rationality. It is, she said, the wellspring of all other virtues and the only truly responsible guide to life. By contrast, she argued that man’s basic vice—and the source of all evil—is irrationality, a rejection of reason. Irrationality is not ignorance, which is simply not knowing, or blindness, which is not seeing. Irrationality is something far more pernicious, she maintained, and far more dangerous. It is “a refusal to see” and “a refusal to know.” In describing what it means to guide one’s life by the virtue of rationality, Rand offered a compelling explanation (the italics in the passage are provided for emphasis and do not appear in the original text):
It means that one must never sacrifice one’s convictions
to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)—
that one must never attempt to fake reality
in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)—
that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved,
neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice).
It means that one must never desire effects without causes,