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Don't eat at a restaurant called 'Mom's'.
Never play poker with a man called 'Doc'.
Never go to bed with a woman [man] who has more problems than you.
Don't get out in front; they'll throw rocks at you.
Never look back; they may be gaining on you.
THE ADAGES ABOVE, EYE-CATCHING as they may be, are not unique: they are representative of a genre that often contains wit and humor and that lays legitimate claim to social wisdom and relevance. They are cautionary or advisory admonitions, having the pithy sound of folk-proverbs even when, as in these and many other instances, they are the products of known persons and not the purported accretions of anonymous folk-wisdom. They will serve for entry into psychoanalytic speculations and hypotheses as to the origins and functions of folk-sayings and proverbs. Some preliminary orienting remarks will be useful.
The first three that I have cited are attributed to the late American novelist, Nelson Algren (1909–1981). The next two are quoted from the legendary baseball player, Satchel Paige. Clearly, all come from a period of masculine preoccupation—I have added the bracketed word "man" to the third. Nevertheless, there is a quality of universality about these advices, as is true of most of the genre, even cross-culturally, as we shall see.
Similar adages have become part of our folklore. Many of W. C. Field's' comic aphorisms are now part of the language: "You can't cheat an honest man;" "Never give a sucker an even break." Others can be found in sources as disparate as P. T. Barnum, Groucho Marx, and Shakespeare. Each shares with many proverbs of unknown origins distillations of accumulated wisdom concerning character and interpersonal relations. Many poke fun at