“Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.”
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 63
Variant: Mr.Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down.
“Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.”
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 63
“Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”
“There is one thing about being President — nobody can tell you when to sit down.”
As quoted in"Sayings of the Week" in The Observer (9 August 1953), and The MacMillan Dictionary of Quotations (1989) by John Daintith, Hazel Egerton, Rosalind Ferguson, Anne Stibbs and Edmund Wright, p. 447
1950s
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
August 19, 1851
Journals (1838-1859)
Variant: How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
“Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.”
Maiden speech https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00003685 in the House of Commons (7 December 1837). Disraeli was being shouted down by other MPs. Compare: "I will be heard", William Lloyd Garrison, Salutatory of the Liberator
1830s