P. G. Wodehouse – Quote Investigator®

Never Explain. Your Friends Don’t Require It, and Your Enemies Won’t Believe You, Anyway

Elbert Hubbard? Victor Grayson? P. G. Wodehouse? Benjamin Jowett? E. A. Isaacs? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Explaining one’s beliefs and motivations is typically worthwhile, but sometimes it seems to be futile. Here are two versions of a germane remark:

(1) Never explain. Your friends don’t require it, and your enemies won’t believe you, anyway.

(2) Never explain—your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you.

U.S. aphorist Elbert Hubbard and British politician Victor Grayson have each received credit for this type of remark. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared as an epigraph on the cover of the February 1904 issue of “The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest” edited by Elbert Hubbard. Boldface added to excepts by QI:^[1]1904 February, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 18, Number 3, Quote on cover page, Published by The Society of the Philistines, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, … Continue reading

Never explain: your friends don’t require it, and your enemies won’t believe you, anyway.

QI believes that Elbert Hubbard deserves credit for this quotation; however, it was not constructed ex nihilo. The previous year Hubbard was sufficiently impressed by another related expression attributed to a prominent scholar that he placed it on the cover of the March 1903 issue of “The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest”:^[2]1903 March, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 16, Number 4, Quote on cover page, Published by The Society of the Philistines, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New … Continue reading

Never explain, never retract, never apologize—get the thing done and let them howl!
—Rev. Dr. Benjamin Jowett

A separate QI article about the saying immediately above is available here.

Additional detailed information about Hubbard’s quotation is available in the Quote Investigator article on the Medium website which is available here.

References

References
↑1	1904 February, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 18, Number 3, Quote on cover page, Published by The Society of the Philistines, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (ProQuest Periodicals Archive)
↑2	1903 March, The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, Edited by Elbert Hubbard, Volume 16, Number 4, Quote on cover page, Published by The Society of the Philistines, The Roycrofters, East Aurora, New York. (Google Books Full View) link

I Always Advise People Never To Give Advice

P. G. Wodehouse? George Bernard Shaw? Smallwood Bessemer? Bob Chieger? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: A famous wit once offered the following piece of self-contradictory advice: Never take advice. Another prominent humorist offered a similar piece of oxymoronic guidance: Never give advice. Would you please help me to find these citations together with the correct phrasings?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1894 critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw sent a letter of instruction to the neophyte critic Reginald Golding Bright. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:^[1]1963 (1955 Copyright), Advice to a Young Critic and Other Letters by Bernard Shaw, Notes and Introduction by E. J. West (Edward Joseph West), Letter Title: A Lesson in Practical Criticism: Shaw Edits … Continue reading

Write a thousand words a day for the next five years for at least nine months every year. Read all the great critics—Ruskin, Richard Wagner, Lessing, Lamb and Hazlitt. Get a ticket for the British Museum reading room, and live there as much as you can. Go to all the first rate orchestral concerts and to the opera, as well as to the theatres.

Shaw provided a long series of additional recommendations, but he finished by comically flipping the entire discourse:

Finally, since I have given you all this advice, I add this crowning precept, the most valuable of all. NEVER TAKE ANYBODY’S ADVICE.

Below are additional selected citations.

Continue reading I Always Advise People Never To Give Advice

References

References
↑1	1963 (1955 Copyright), Advice to a Young Critic and Other Letters by Bernard Shaw, Notes and Introduction by E. J. West (Edward Joseph West), Letter Title: A Lesson in Practical Criticism: Shaw Edits a Bright Review, Letter From: George Bernard Shaw, Letter To: Reginald Golding Bright, Letter Date: Dec. 2, 1894, Start Date 12, Quote Page 14, Capricorn Books, New York. (Verified with scans)

I Know I Was Writing Stories When I Was Five

P. G. Wodehouse? John Gardner? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The popular and prolific humorist P. G. Wodehouse created indelible characters such as Bertie Wooster and Reginald Jeeves. Wodehouse apparently claimed that he was a remarkably precocious author:

I know I was writing stories when I was five.

I haven’t been able to find a solid citation for this. Would you please help?

Quote Investigator: The prominent literary journal “The Paris Review” published an interview with P. G. Wodehouse in the Winter 1975 issue. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:^[1]Winter 1975, The Paris Review, Number 64, P. G. Wodehouse, The Art of Fiction No. 60, Interviewed by Gerald Clarke, Paris Review, Inc., Flushing, New York. (Online archive of The Paris Review at … Continue reading

INTERVIEWER
Did you always know you would be a writer?

WODEHOUSE
Yes, always. I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose. I was about twenty when I sold my first story, and I’ve been a full-time writer since 1902. I can’t think of myself as anything but a writer.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading I Know I Was Writing Stories When I Was Five

References

References
↑1	Winter 1975, The Paris Review, Number 64, P. G. Wodehouse, The Art of Fiction No. 60, Interviewed by Gerald Clarke, Paris Review, Inc., Flushing, New York. (Online archive of The Paris Review at theparisreview.org; accessed November 6, 2016) link