"Stop digging."

[Garson O'Toole]

 Laurence Horn wrote
> This is all very nice, but "When you're in a hole, stop digging" has
> always struck me as less evocative (and no sounder) advice than
> "(When you're buried to your neck in shit...,) don't make waves".  I
> seem to recall the latter is sometimes contextualized in Hell.

In 1971 Isaac Asimov published a version of the tale Larry mentions
that is set in hell. This does predate the 1977 cite for the "stop
digging" adage, and I did not try to push the date further back. Below
is a link to the 1991 edition (instead of 1971) located in Google
Books because the text of the story is fully visible in the 1991
edition.

The set up: Smith arrives in hell and must decide which room of
punishment he wishes to enter. He hears screams and shrieks from
behind some room doors. He hears gentle murmuring from behind one
door, and he selects it:

Cite: 1991, Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor edited by Isaac Asimov,
Story: 491, Page 331, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York. [Reprint of
1971 Houghton Mifflin edition]

Instantly, the door was flung open, and he was propelled inside. He
found himself up to the lower lip in a vast sea of overwhelmingly
putrid sewage.

With him were uncounted millions of others, and now the murmur he had
heard from outside the door resolved itself into words as everyone,
standing strainedly on tiptoe, kept muttering, without quite daring to
open his mouth, "Don't make waves! Don't make waves!"

http://books.google.com/books?id=nFdOG5JxWZoC&q=tiptoe#v=snippet&q=tiptoe&f=false

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org