[Ads-l] "Try to Please Everybody"

[Baker, John]

It's not verbatim, but there's something of an antedating with Aesop's fable of The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey (although Wikipedia, which uses the title The miller, his son and the donkey, says it can be securely dated only to the 13th century).  In the Harvard Classics edition, this has the moral "Please all, and you will please none."


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shapiro, Fred
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2017 1:49 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Try to Please Everybody"

A Treasury of Business Quotations has "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody," citing it to an address by Herbert B. Swope, Dec. 20, 1950.  Can anyone point me to any earlier occurrences of this or similar (maybe "everyone" instead of "everybody") quotations?


Fred Shapiro




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