Nothing ventured, nothing gained although it’s better to be safe than sorry
To impart wisdom in the shape of a proverb, adults tend to adopt a trite, sing-song voice. In such a voice I was told as a child that ‘pennies add up to pounds’ and found the wit to reply in sing-song treble: ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish’.
Ever since, I’ve been teaching myself to contradict one proverb with another. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again,’ my secondary-school headmaster once chanted, infuriatingly, at me. ‘But Sir,’ the precocious Parris shot back, ‘what about that time-honoured military wisdom: “never reinforce failure”?’ ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ said a friend when a LandRover we had bought turned out to need more spending on it than we had bargained for. ‘Never throw good money after bad,’ I replied.
Folk wisdom is such a cowardly thing. It resolves itself into a sanctimonious little phrase to express the sentiment most convenient for a given situation, and then, when a new situation seems to call for the opposite sentiment, devises another proverb to express that too. ‘Many hands make light work’ people say; then, when many hands fail to produce this effect, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.
‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ they say, if they want to goad you into making a fool of yourself; then console you (when you have) with ‘better to have loved and lost ...’ But when they want to discourage you from an intemperate advance, it’s always ‘Fools rush in ...’, ‘softly, softly catchee monkey’, ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’.
Indeed, under the chapter-heading Courage/Discretion/Resolution/Hesitation, we learn that he who hesitates is lost, that fortune favours the brave, and ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, as well as that ‘the person who never made mistakes never made anything’ — but also that it’s better to be safe than sorry, that discretion is the better part of valour, and that he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. In love we are to understand that familiarity breeds contempt, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and that absence makes the heart grow fonder. But also that out of sight is out of mind and that if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.
Likewise in the arena of financial risk. Just when we have absorbed the wisdom that a penny saved is a penny gained, that a fool and his money are soon parted, and that ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ we are introduced to the New Testament ‘Parable of the Talents’, from which the poor lad who is chary of risky investment and buries the money his dad gave him, is castigated as an idiot. Not many pages later the Prodigal Son has the fatted calf killed for his return, while his hard-working older brother — steeped in the knowledge that many a mickle makes a muckle, that a stitch in time saves nine (waste not, want not), that he must feather his nest, and that as he sows so shall he reap emerges as the mug.
Repenting of his virtue, the older brother may cry ‘Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!’, adding that having considered the lilies of the field who toil not neither do they spin, and realising that tomorrow is another day and that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, he has decided henceforward to live for the moment, sufficient unto the day being the evil thereof. He forgets that if he makes his bed he must lie in it, and we may be sure our sins will find us out.
Which way to turn? No man can serve two masters — on the other hand if you can’t ride two horses you shouldn’t be in the circus. Should he call a day a day? Or should he refuse to change horses in midstream, stick to his guns, and stay in it for the long haul? In despair he may sell all that he hath, and give to the poor — and then discover that ‘the poor you have always with you ...’ Perhaps he was unlucky. Well, lightning never strikes the same place twice (or does bad luck comes in threes?). He should know that when one door shuts, another opens (or does opportunity never knock twice?) Comforting himself with the thought that the darkest hour is just before dawn, he shudders at the news that there’s nothing so bad it can’t be made worse.
Let us leave him to his fate, and consider whether manners maketh man or whether, on the contrary, fine words butter no parsnips. Or whether handsome is as handsome does, you can’t judge a book by its cover, appearances are deceptive and beauty is only skin-deep — or whether, by contrast, you can judge a man by his shoes, tidy dress shows a tidy mind, cleanliness is next to godliness and the style is the man?
Or whether talk is cheap and a lie is halfway round the world before the truth can get its boots on, or whether, on the contrary, there’s no smoke without a fire; whether sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt us — or whether to lose our reputation is to lose the better part of ourselves; whether we should concentrate on the wood lest we fail to see it for the trees — or, rather, always read the small print, because the devil is in the detail?
And should we let sleeping dogs lie? After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you can’t win ’em all, and one should let well enough alone. Counsels of perfection can make the best the enemy of the good. Yet if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing well and you shouldn’t spoil the ship for a ha’pennyworth of tar. Ah well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it — except that procrastination is the thief of time and you should never put off until the morrow what you can do today.
One thing’s for sure. Honesty is the best policy. Cheats never prosper. Unless, that is, the Devil looks after his own. The proverb-maker’s job puts me in mind of that sour description of a newspaper leader-writer’s function: to wait in safety until the battle is over, then come down from the hills and bayonet the wounded.
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