Smell red roses, not white roses.

From a list of dos and don'ts for the improvement of the brain, from 1596.

"Nothing makes for a festive spring like lettuce, bloodletting, and laxatives."

"How to Prepare for Spring, 1528" — spring, AKA "prymtyme" (prime time?).

"Most authors indulge in little eccentricities when working, and, if the time should ever come that your name is brought before the public notice..."

"... it would be advisable to develop some whimsical habit so as to be prepared for the interviewer, who is sure to ask whether you have one. To push your pen through your hair during creative moments would be a good plan; it would reveal a line of baldness where you had furrowed the hair off, and afford ocular proof to all and sundry that you possessed a genuine eccentricity."

From "How to Write a Novel: A Practical Guide to the Art of Fiction" (1901).

"Lamb is more Nutritious than any kind of Poultry, Mutton than Lamb, Veal than Mutton, and Beef than Veal; But Pork is more Nutricious than any of these..."

"... for the Juices of Pork, which is more like Human Flesh than any other Flesh is, are more adapted to the Nourishment of a Human Body than the Juices of any other Flesh." 

IN THE COMMENTS: BDNYC points out that I've blogged this before. I'd forgotten! I wonder how often I do such things. I'd like to think this is the first time. Perhaps not. It's interesting to see that I blogged it exactly the same way — except for the placement of the line break — even though I contemplated doing some different things with it, including discussing the chapter titled "A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham" in Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

[O]ne may note that children if left unmolested by rabbis and imams are very drawn to pigs, especially to baby ones, and that firefighters in general do not like to eat roast pork or crackling. The barbaric vernacular word for roasted human in New Guinea and elsewhere was “long pig”: I have never had the relevant degustatative experience myself, but it seems that we do, if eaten, taste very much like pigs.

"Lamb is more Nutritious than any kind of Poultry, Mutton than Lamb, Veal than Mutton, and Beef than Veal..."

"... But Pork is more Nutricious than any of these; for the Juices of Pork, which is more like Human Flesh than any other Flesh is, are more adapted to the Nourishment of a Human Body than the Juices of any other Flesh."

"When you desire to make any one 'love' you with whom you meet... you can very readily reach him..."

Says The Ladies' Book of Useful Information (1896):

Wherever or whenever you meet again, at the first opportunity grasp his hand in an earnest, sincere, and affectionate manner, observing at the same time the following important directions, viz.: As you take his bare hand in yours, press your thumb gently, though firmly, between the bones of the thumb and the forefinger of his hand, and at the very instant when you press thus on the blood vessels (which you can before ascertain to pulsate) look him earnestly and lovingly in the eyes, and send all your heart's, mind's, and soul's strength into his organization, and he will be your friend...

His organization, eh?

I was all about to find Meade and try that move, but I got distracted by "organization" and had to check out the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. Here are a couple quotes therefrom to help you grasp "organization" (until it pulsates):

1860 Dickens Uncommerc. Traveller in All Year Round 24 Mar. 513/1, I must stuff into my delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got there.

1908 G. K. Chesterton Man who was Thursday 39 You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organization which is so essential to anarchy.

"If a father and his son take a widow and her daughter in marriage, so that the son marries the mother and the father the daughter..."

"... say, please, what is the relationship between the sons they will bear?"

ADDED: Based on the comments, nobody got what I found amusing here, undoubtedly because they didn't click through.

"How to cleans the sweatie and sluttish Complexion..."

"Take thirty Snails prepared, a quart of Goats milk, hogs suet three ounces, camfre poudred two drams, beat them together, and distil them in an Alembick."

Advice from 1665, from the blog Ask the Past, which was linked today at Metafilter.

Let's try one more. This is "How to Tell Jokes, 1558":

"Where your pleasantries are not rewarded with the laughter of listeners, cease and desist from telling jokes in the future. The defect is in you, not in your listeners... For these are movements of the mind, and if they are pleasant and lively, they are an indication and a testimonial of the nimble mind and the good habits of the speaker-- this is particularly liked by other men and endears us to them. But if they are without grace and charm, they have the contrary effect, so it appears a jackass is joking, or that someone very fat with an enormous butt is dancing and hopping about in a tight-fitting vest."

Someone... with an enormous butt is dancing and hopping about... which is actually all we do these days, in case you want to Ask Last Night at the VMAs (go to 1:45).