take the cash and let the credit go

take the cash and let the credit go

English

Proverb

take the cash and let the credit go

1. Exploit and enjoy the opportunities and pleasures available here and now and do not invest effort pursuing prospective future gratifications.
   • 1898, Henry Harland, "Merely Players" in Comedies and Errors, p. 52 (Google preview):

     "I will live my life, alone with the few people I find to my liking. I will take the cash and let the credit go."

   • 1913, Josiah Royce, in Introduction to The Foundations of Science by Henri Poincaré, authorized translation by George Bruce Halsted, (text at Project Gutenberg):

     Why not "take the cash and let the credit go"? Why pursue the elusive theoretical "unification" any further, when what we daily get from our sciences is an increasing wealth of detailed information and of practical guidance?

   • 1927, Irving Babbit, "Buddha and the Occident" in On Literature, Cultures, and Religion (2006 edition), →ISBN, p. 251 (Google preview):

     [N]o religious teacher was ever more opposed than Buddha in his scheme of salvation to every form of postponement and procrastination. He would have his followers take the cash and let the credit go—though the cash in this case is not the immediate pleasure but the immediate peace.

   • 1946 Jan. 28, "Education: Violator," Time (retrieved 3 Aug 2014):

     William Harding Johnson, $15,000-a-year superintendent of Chicago's school system, has been content to take the cash and let the credit go. He has made good money by co-authoring textbooks for Chicago's schools and from his tutoring school for teachers.

   • 1977, Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (2011 edition), →ISBN, Author's Note (Google preview):

     "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.

Usage notes

• Famously used by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Some for the Glories of This World; and some

Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

Synonyms

• carpe diem
• gather rosebuds
• seize the day

See also

• a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
• better an egg today than a hen tomorrow