David Copperfield Quotes
Shmoop will make you a better lover...of quotes
ALL QUOTES POPULAR BROWSE BY AUTHOR BROWSE BY SOURCE BROWSE BY TOPIC BROWSE BY SUBJECT
Source: David Copperfield
Author: Charles Dickens
My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
Context
This famous line is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849).
Uh-oh—anyone else hear those sirens? It must be the cliché police, coming to drag this quote's speaker away in handcuffs for crimes against originality.
The speaker in question, Mr. Micawber, is a father figure to young David Copperfield (and was, in fact, inspired by Dickens' own father). He's a nice guy and genuinely cares about David—certainly more than he cares about having a thought of his own, anyway.
The idea of "never doing tomorrow what you can do today" was nothing new, even in Dickens' age. Nor was the adage "Procrastination is the thief of time," which was a line crafted by the poet Edward Young about a century earlier.
In the book, Mr. Micawber imparts this advice to David. To be fair, he never claims he came up with it himself, so he's not a total fraud. Still, it would have been nice if his advice was something more like, "You can't take a penny from a dry well when many miles from home." It wouldn't have made any sense, but at least he could have owned it.
Where you've heard it
Well, for one thing, you may have read it if you were looking over the poems of Edward Young, since he's the guy who actually came up with the procrastination/thief bit.
Otherwise, you may have run across it while reading a writing blog or listening to a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most likely though, you've heard your mother say it when she's trying to convince you to get your homework done before your favorite TV shows come on. It may be 300 years old, but it's still good advice.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Obviously, procrastination isn't an actual thief. It's an abstract concept and it has no hands, so we don't need to keep our eyes on our electronic equipment when it's around. Therefore, this is clearly a metaphor, which makes this quote a little pretentious.