Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.
Never get into a narrow double bed with a wide single man.
Never argue with a doctor; he has inside information.
BOB ELLIOTT, from a “Bob and Ray”
sketch with Ray Goulding
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself;
after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
DAME EDNA EVERAGE (BARRY HUMPHRIES)
Among Real Men, there has always been one simple rule:
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flamethrower.
BRUCE FEIRSTEIN
This appeared in Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, a 1982 satire that sold over a million and a half copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for fifty-three weeks.
Never perish a good thought.MALCOLM FORBES, playing off the saying “Perish the thought”
Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.NORMAN FORD
Never ask of money spentWhere the spender thinks it went.Nobody was ever meantTo remember or inventWhat he did with every cent.ROBERT FROST, in “The Hardship
of Accounting” (1936)
One doesn’t typically think of Frost’s poetry as witty and whimsical, but if someone ever exclaims, “Where has all the money gone?” you could do a lot worse than quoting this little verse in your defense. The poem first appeared in his 1936 book A Further Range. Another famous poet with a sense of humor was T. S. Eliot. He once said:
Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it.
Never eat anything that comes when you call.BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT
Never read by candlelight anything smaller than the ace of clubs.SIR HENRY HALFORD
Never take an old guy to a place like Hooters.CATHY HAMILTON, in Over-the-Hillisms:
What They Say & What They Really Mean (2004)
Hamilton explained: “After one beer, old guys tend to ignore their inner censors and actually verbalize out loud the thoughts going through their heads.” So, what exactly is an old guy likely to say? According to Hamilton, things like “Va-va-va-voom!”
Never start a project until you’ve picked out someone to blame.
JOHNNY HART & BRENT PARKER,
a caption from The Wizard of Id comic strip
Humorists are famous for taking serious advice—like never blame someone else for a mistake—and turning it on its head. Yes, feel free to blame people, this one suggests—but make sure you identify a scapegoat before you actually start working on a project.
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, in Time Enough for Love (1973)
Never get married while you’re going to college;
it’s hard to get a start if a prospective employer
finds you’ve already made one mistake.
FRANK MCKINNEY “KIN” HUBBARD
Never go to restaurants named after days of the week.
ALAN KING
King added: “If I have to say to someone, ‘Should we meet Tuesday at Friday’s? Or should it be Friday at Tuesday’s?’ I feel like I’m part of an Abbott and Costello routine.”
Never look on the bright side; the glare is blinding.
FLORENCE KING
Never relinquish clothing to a hotel valet
without first specifically telling him that you want it back.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Never brag about your ancestors coming over on the Mayflower;
the immigration laws weren’t so strict in those days.
LEW LEHR
Never buy expensive thong underwear.
One trip through the dryer and it’s a frilly bookmark.CAROL LEIFER, in When You Lie About
Your Age, the Terrorists Win (2009)
This comes from a section titled “40 Things I Know at 50 (Because 50 is the New 40).” Leifer also learned some other interesting things over the years:
Never eat at a restaurant that charges for bread.
Never eat pistachio nuts after getting a French manicure.
Never wear high heels to an event
if you’re going to be outside on a lawn.
Never take your shoes off on a plane.
Please find other ways to show your “relaxed side.”
Never buy Sweet’N low, Equal, or Splenda at the supermarket.
That’s what restaurants are for.
Never eat anything whose listed ingredients
cover more than one-third of the package.JOSEPH LEONARD, from a 1986 Herb Caen
column in the San Francisco Chronicle
Never darken my Dior again!BEATRICE LILLIE, to a waiter who spilled soup on her dress,
in her 1972 autobiography Every Other Inch a Lady
Lillie was a popular stage and screen actress on both sides of the Atlantic in the first half of the twentieth century. Here she cleverly alters never darken my door again, a centuries-old English saying that means to show up unwanted at a place one has been thrown out of. In nineteenth-century theater, the phrase would typically be delivered by an angry parent expelling an intransigent child from the family home (the darken portion of the saying refers to a person’s shadow appearing on the threshold). Nigel Rees dates the saying to at least 1692 in England. It soon became common enough in colonial America that Ben Franklin used it in The Busybody, a 1729 series of essays. By the twentieth century, the expression would never be used seriously, and in the 1933 film Duck Soup, Groucho Marx put it this way: “Go, and never darken my towels again!”
Never call an accountant a credit to his profession;
a good accountant is a debit to his profession.CHARLES J. C. LYALL
Never subscribe to anything that smells better than it reads.DOUG MARLETTE
I found this a number of years ago in a Kudzu cartoon. It appeared around the time that magazines first began inserting scratch ’n sniff ads for perfumes and fragrances.
I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs.
And it was good. Go ahead and laugh.
I think the most important thing I learned was:
Never let go of the girl’s leg, no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.STEVE MARTIN
Never eat more than you can lift.MISS PIGGY (Jim Henson)
Miss Piggy (formally named Miss Pigathius “Piggy” Lee) was originally viewed by creator Jim Henson as a minor supporting character when he began The Muppet Show in 1975. She eventually became one of the show’s most popular figures and a cultural icon, famous for a diva personality that swung wildly from saccharinely charming when she wanted something to violent rages when her desires were frustrated. She also occasionally tossed out hilarious one-liners, as in the previous dieting tip. She also offered this advice about buying cosmetics: “Never purchase beauty products in a hardware store.”
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.ADDISON MIZNER
Never raise your hand to your children;
it leaves your midsection unprotected.ROBERT ORBEN
This line is often attributed to comedian Red Buttons, but it was originally authored by Orben. In 1946, at age eighteen, Orben wrote Encyclopedia of Patter, the first of his many joke books (he also published a comedy newsletter for three decades). In the 1950s and ’60s, he was America’s most famous gag writer, doing stints with Dick Gregory, Jack Paar, and Red Skelton. Orben was such a comedic staple in the 1960s that Lenny Bruce said his routines were different from mainstream comics in part because they contained “no Orben jokes.” As a speechwriter for President Gerald Ford, Orben was almost certainly the man who authored Ford’s famous “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln” line.