Saying: Never judge a book by its cover.

My Answer: Never judge judging a book by its cover by its cover.

Both literally and metaphorically, there are just too many books out there. You can’t read them all, and you probably can’t even read reviews for them all. For most, you won’t even pull the book off the shelf so you can see the whole cover. Judging books by their covers is an imperfect system. You end up missing a lot of really good books, and you may end up reading some that are a waste of your time.

Sometimes, you’ll get a good recommendation, or hear a book review on the radio – but this is really just another kind of “cover” – information that may or may not serve you well in knowing the nature of the whole book – and, the more in-depth you go in your selection, the fewer books you’ll be able to know anything about at all.

In short, you have to judge books by their covers, in one way or another. With time and practice, you can develop an eye for the kinds of books you might like – but it will never be perfect. It helps to know you’re making assumptions – that every book you pass over may be the read of a lifetime, and you may never know. But, not knowing, you’ll still be able to enjoy the best of the books you do read.

Saying: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

My Answer: I agree with the principle, and I agree that there’s too much sloppiness in the world.  On the other hand, I think that this principle stops me a little too often.  If I find time lacking, I often don’t start – and I don’t think that saying was ever intended as an excuse to procrastinate.

In particular, ReadSteve gets stalled too often because I want a complete and finished piece before I put anything out on the Web.  Of course, nothing should stop me from starting a piece when time is short, and then completing it later.  That doesn’t violate the principle of doing it well.  I’ll try to do that more.

But it doesn’t hurt to have more than one weapon in my arsenal.  Another option when time is short is to just do a short piece.  I don’t need to write a thousand words.  This isn’t an English paper, and maybe you don’t even want to read a thousand words.

So let this serve as the introduction to a series I’ve thought of doing for some time – my own takes on sayings.  Some of these will be famous quotes, but I won’t be above using just about anything that’s well known, from ancient times, or from yesterday morning.  I’m not even going to promise that every saying will be well known.  My series, my rules – and I reserve the right to break my own rules.

I know the concept isn’t original, but I hope that some of my thoughts will be.