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Unwritten Laws: The Unofficial Rules of Life as Handed Down by Murphy and Other Sages
CAPONE'S LAW. You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.
LANCE'S LAW. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
MILLER'S LAW. The quality of food in restaurants is in inverse proportion to the number of signed celebrity photographs on the wall.
WALPOLE'S LAW. Every man has his price.
Unwritten Laws is a wonderfully entertaining treasury of more than five hundred rules, strategies, and ironical insights, with many amendments and corollaries, all associated with particular individuals.
Organized alphabetically, from Lady Astor ("All women marry beneath them.") to Zeno ("The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."), from Woody Allen ("Eighty percent of success is showing up.") to Oscar Wilde ("There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."), Unwritten Laws contains a generous sampling of the collective wisdom of humankind.
Hugh Rawson not only gives sources and dates for the law's, but annotates them with fascinating details. For example, Alfred Lord Tennyson's widely accepted "In the spring a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love" turns out to be a mistake, recent research showing that male testosterone levels are actually higher in the fall!
This delightful book is as wonderful for browsing as it is for providing guidance over the rocks and shoals of life.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
LANCE'S LAW. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
MILLER'S LAW. The quality of food in restaurants is in inverse proportion to the number of signed celebrity photographs on the wall.
WALPOLE'S LAW. Every man has his price.
Unwritten Laws is a wonderfully entertaining treasury of more than five hundred rules, strategies, and ironical insights, with many amendments and corollaries, all associated with particular individuals.
Organized alphabetically, from Lady Astor ("All women marry beneath them.") to Zeno ("The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."), from Woody Allen ("Eighty percent of success is showing up.") to Oscar Wilde ("There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."), Unwritten Laws contains a generous sampling of the collective wisdom of humankind.
Hugh Rawson not only gives sources and dates for the law's, but annotates them with fascinating details. For example, Alfred Lord Tennyson's widely accepted "In the spring a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love" turns out to be a mistake, recent research showing that male testosterone levels are actually higher in the fall!
This delightful book is as wonderful for browsing as it is for providing guidance over the rocks and shoals of life.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
- GenresNonfictionReferenceHumor
290 pages, Hardcover
First published May 27, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 25, 2011
pretty interesting read. some of the "laws" in this book i already know, but most of them were new.. so yay. i like knowing new things.
it would be better if the way the book was written was fun fun fun, not rigid and boring. okay, it wasn't THAT serious but still. all text and no illustration? me no gusta! towards the end, all i did was skim through.
anyway i don't quite believe in some of the "laws" that were presented. some of them just doesn't apply to me. read this for fun, and don't take it seriously. 2 stars.
it would be better if the way the book was written was fun fun fun, not rigid and boring. okay, it wasn't THAT serious but still. all text and no illustration? me no gusta! towards the end, all i did was skim through.
anyway i don't quite believe in some of the "laws" that were presented. some of them just doesn't apply to me. read this for fun, and don't take it seriously. 2 stars.
August 4, 2014
Fun book to read, with Murphy's Law, and a whole lot of others. Gives some history of many of the "laws", along with referencing other laws that are related to the law you are reading. Fun to realize how accurate they are, and how much you see them applied to your own life.
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September 14, 2011A fun look at a lot of the quotes we all use everyday, and some we don't know as well. Amusingly weaves together the history of many of these laws and the people who made them.
November 6, 2016
These are cute and interesting, but not many new ones. Old stuff,for the most part.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews