Unwritten Laws : The Unofficial Rules of Life as Handed Down by Murphy and Other Sages Book

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. No legislature ever enacted these laws, yet they shape human affairs as profoundly as an official code or decree - and they provide excellent guidance for negotiating one's way past the rocks and shoals of life. 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 each law, but annotates them with fascinating details about the great lawgivers and their contributions. For example, Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in California when he discovered in 1949 that "If anything can go wrong, it will," while 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!