Opening Line of the Week
I believe this was the only thing Henry ever wrote on the subject of opening lines, and he did it in characteristic fashion—making a strong and emphatic assertion and then immediately walking it back. The narrator continued:
“It is unimaginative, flat, dry, and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable.”
For more than 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.
The Kidney Stone Has Been Pulverized!
On Monday of this past week, I underwent a laser lithotripsy to remove an unusually large kidney stone—11 millimeters in diameter—that had become lodged in my ureter just below my kidney. The stone had been diagnosed several weeks earlier, when my urologist placed a temporary stent alongside the stone so urine could flow past the blockage.
To appreciate the seriousness of the problem, consider that a normal ureter is only about 3 to 4 millimeters in diameter. In my case, the large stone got wedged in that narrow passageway, totally obstructing the flow of urine—an anatomical situation that brings to mind the image of a pig swallowed by a python.
This week, my urologist went back in and, using a laser, blasted the stone into tiny fragments that could be removed. I’m home now, feeling weak and experiencing some discomfort when I urinate, but those complaints are minor compared with the enormous sense of relief—and, frankly, elation—I feel about the outcome.
This Week’s Puzzler
On August 30, 1930, this man was born in Omaha, Nebraska (he celebrates his 96th birthday this week). Growing up, he showed an early interest in business, hanging out in his father’s stock brokerage business and going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions and other wares.
He was only ten when he visited the New York Stock Exchange in 1940, and by age eleven he made his first stock purchase—three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 a share (he also bought three shares for his sister Doris). Many years later, he said about that first stock purchase:
“I made my first investment at age eleven. I was wasting my life up until then.”
After getting an M.A. in economics from Columbia University in 1951, he returned to Omaha, where he began working as an investment salesman and stockbroker. In 1956, at age 26, he enlisted the support of several relatives and formed Berkshire Hathaway, a small investment group. A decade later, the firm’s success astonished people in the investment world, with assets up 1,156% (almost ten times higher than the Dow, which was up a mere 123%).
As the decades passed, this week’s Mystery Man continued his winning ways, and in 2008 was named by Forbes magazine as the world’s richest person, with a net worth of $62 billion. He displaced Bill Gates, who had occupied the top position for thirteen consecutive years. Despite his wealth, he never forgot his midwestern roots. In 2009, Tom Brokaw asked him why he lived in the same Omaha house he purchased 50 years earlier for $31,500. He replied chiastically:
“I’m happy where I am. Somebody said one time, ‘Success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get.’ I got that house fifty years ago; I love it.”
In 2006, he announced that he would be giving away the overwhelming majority of his fortune, rather than leave it to his children. Most of it would go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with additional gifts to four foundations associated with his family. His initial pledge to the Gates Foundation was then worth more than $30 billion, and he arranged for the shares to be transferred gradually over many years.
His guiding idea was simple: extraordinary wealth carries an obligation to put that wealth to productive use for society. In 2010, he joined with Bill and Melinda Gates to create The Giving Pledge, inviting the world's wealthiest people to commit to giving away a majority of their fortunes during their lifetimes or in their wills.
In his speeches and annual Berkshire Hathaway “Chairman’s Letters,” he exhibited a gift for expressing himself in memorable ways. I have scores of his quotations in my personal files, but this one has always been a personal favorite:
Who is this person? (Answer below)
Strongly Worded Advice—Positive and Negative
From the beginning of civilization, human beings have used language to influence other people, and often these attempts take the form of urging people to live their lives according to some guiding principle or rule of conduct, like “Try to be a little kinder than necessary,” “Make every effort to do what you’re afraid to do,” and “Be smarter than the people who hire you.”
When people feel the principle is especially important, they often amp it up by expressing themselves more forcefully:
When attempts to influence are stated more strongly, people move from mere suggestion to the more compelling arenas of persuasion or exhortation, which The American Heritage Dictionary defines this way:
Etymologically, persuade comes from Latin persuadēre, meaning “to convince” or “to induce by argument or entreaty.” The root sense of the word is “to advise or urge thoroughly”—and thereby bring someone around to your point of view.” The word exhort comes from Latin exhortārī, meaning “to encourage, urge, or incite.” The underlying sense is to strongly urge or encourage someone to take a particular course of action.
History is also filled with equally strong attempts to discourage people from a certain practice or to dissuade them from a course of action—and it is often done by simply putting the word never at the beginning of the sentence. Over the centuries, many have achieved proverbial status:
And, of course, this week’s Mystery Man also employed this phrasing in his clever saying about asking a barber if you need a haircut. In all of these sayings, people are being strongly urged not to do—indeed, never to do—something.
So, what is the proper term for these negatively phrased pieces of advice? One obvious candidate, of course, is admonition, which has two meanings: (1) a gentle reproof, and (2) cautionary advice or warning. The first meaning shows up, for example, when a teacher admonishes a child for being late to class. It is the second meaning that applies to our current situation. In an AHD Usage Note, the editors write:
“Admonish implies the giving of advice or a warning so that a fault can be rectified or a danger avoided.”
While admonish is a perfectly acceptable term for strongly worded cautionary warnings, there is another word that is, technically speaking, even more accurate. But unless you have the vocabulary of a five-time Jeopardy! champ or a professor of rhetoric, the word is almost certainly not in your current vocabulary. The term is dehortation (pronounced DEE-hore-TAY-shun). It’s the exact opposite of exhortation, and the verb form is dehort, an antonym of exhort. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it this way:
In 2007, I was delighted to see dehort featured in an issue of “A.Word.A.Day” (AWAD), a daily e-mail described by The New York Times as “arguably the most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace.” About dehort, editor Anu Garg wrote:
“This well-meaning word has gone out of circulation while its antithesis ‘exhort’ continues to prosper. It’s about time to remedy the situation and bring this rather usable word back to currency.”
Four years later, in 2011, I tried to do exactly that with a book containing nearly 2,000 quotations—all of them beginning with the word never. Being a realist, I knew from the outset that the words dehort and dehortation would never become part of popular usage, so I coined another word that I believed had a better chance of catching on: Neverisms.
A few years earlier, I’d done something similar when I created the term ifferisms to describe aphorisms that begin with the word if. That neologism worked out pretty well back then, and, as you can see from the positive reviews above, some of America’s most celebrated wordsmiths thought this new coinage succeeded with my Neverisms book as well.
Let me bring my post to a close this week by featuring a dozen of my all-time favorite quotations—all of which fit perfectly under the rubric of the literary device known as dehortation.
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. — Nelson Algren
Never comment on a woman’s rear end. Never use the words “large” or “size” with “rear end.” Never. — Tim Allen
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died — Erma Bombeck
If you don’t like it, stop doing it. Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. — Johnny Carson
Never lose a holy curiosity. — Albert Einstein
Never confuse movement with action. — Ernest Hemingway
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. — William Faulkner
Never try to outstubborn a cat. — Robert A. Heinlein
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. — Margaret Mead
Never let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know in your heart you were meant to do. — Leroy “Satchel” Paige
Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning. — Anthony Trollope
Never lose sight of the fact that old age needs so little, but needs that little so much. — Margaret Willour
For source information on these and nearly a 100,000 other quotations, go here.
Cartoons of the Week:
Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:
Warren Buffett
Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:
Thanks for joining me this week. See you again next Sunday morning.
Mardy Grothe
Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com
Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note
Another reader passed along an update on Warren Buffett's generosity -- still generous, but now in a little different way:
Warren Buffett ended his donations to the Gates Foundation in July 2026, despite having pledged an “irrevocable” commitment in 2006. After the Gateses divorced and Bill Gates' ties to Epstein came out, plus Buffett deciding his children had reached the maturity to handle the assets (this last reason was the main one).
Hi Mardy!
Glad to hear you are improved from the painful kidney stone! You and Katherine have been through quite the ordeals the past few years! Here's wishing you good health and all good things in the days to come!