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Ogden Nash (quotes)
- To love is an active verb.
- Celery, raw, Develops the jaw
- How Sunday into Monday melts!
- A bit of talcum Is always walcum.
- All that glitters is sold as gold.
- Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain’t.
- If called by a panther, don’t anther.
- The old men know when an old man dies.
- Too much Chablis can make you whablis.
- Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
- A dog’s best friend is his illiteracy.
- Don’t Cry Darling, It’s Blood All Right
- In the world of mules there are no rules.
- But all ladies think they weigh too much.
- Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.
- The reason for much matrimony is patrimony.
- When there are monsters there are miracles.
- Women would rather be right than reasonable.
- A lady is known by the product she endorses.
- Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
- Where there is a monster, there is a miracle.
- No man is greater than his respect for sleep.
- One thing about the past. It’s likely to last.
- Bankers are just like anybody else, only richer
- Bankers are just like everyone else only richer.
- One man’s remorse is another man’s reminiscence.
- Here’s a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.
- Bankers are just like anybody else, except richer
- Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it.
- Wind is caused by the trees waving their branches.
- In real life, it takes only one to make a quarrel.
- I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
- Bankers are just like everybody else, except richer.
- I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl?
- Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
- Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.
- Commitments the voters don’t know about can’t hurt you.
- How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
- Time is like the ocean, always there, always different.
- When you’re wrong admit it, when you’re right, shut up.
- I claim there ain’t Another Saint As great as Valentine.
- A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
- Humor is the best means of surviving in a difficult world.
- Malt does more than Hubbard did to help us look into the Id
- You are much happier when you are happy than when you ain’t.
- No, you never get any fun Out of the things you haven’t done.
- I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.
- The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually beomes a cat.
- The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.
- The cow is of the bovine ilk: One end is moo, the other, milk.
- Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?
- I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old,
- God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.
- When I ponder my mind I consistently find It is glued On food.
- Some people’s money is merited and other people’s is inherited.
- Life is sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
- Behold the Zebra on the plains, And shudder at his mighty manes!
- Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.
- To Tom Carlson or his dog-depending on whose taste it best suits.
- I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
- Progress may have been all right once, but it has gone on too long
- When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
- Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
- Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.
- Only the gamefish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down.
- At another year I would not boggle Except that when I jog I joggle.
- He without benefit of scruples – His fun and money soon quadruples.
- Progress might have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long.
- My garden will never make me famous, I’m a horticultural ignoramus.
- Poets aren’t very useful Because they aren’t consumeful or produceful
- To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
- When a lady’s erotic life is vexed God knows what God is coming next.
- Shake and shake The catsup bottle. None will come, And then a lot’ll.
- Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren’t consumeful or produceful..
- The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it’s always a cat.
- Neath tile or thatch That man is rich Who has a scratch For every itch.
- Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.
- You can take it as understood, That your luck changes only if it’s good.
- Home is heaven and orgies are vile, But I like an orgy, once in a while.
- I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.
- One bliss for which There is no match Is when you itch To up and scratch.
- Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
- Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how.
- The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin.
- Home is heaven and orgies are vile/ But you need an orgy, once in a while.
- He is not drunk, who from the floor, can rise and stand and shout for more
- Any kiddies in school can love like a fool,/ But hating, my boy, is an art.
- People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
- Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi; Consider the Empire and Gandhi.
- Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
- Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
- Beneath this slab/ John Brown is stowed./ He watched the ads,/ And not the road.
- The burnt child, urged by rankling ire, Can hardly wait to get back at the fire.
- The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions is by their actions
- All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart.
- Some tortures are physical and some are mental, but the one that’s both is dental.
- Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it.
- Why did the Lord give use so much quickness unless it was to avoid responsibility?
- It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin, That lays eggs under your skin.
- I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.
- The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions/ Is by their actions.
- Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.
- Then blessings on thee, my afternoon torpor Thou makest a prince of a mental porpor.
- The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.
- Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.
- Every new year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?
- Middle age ends and senescence begins, The day your descendants outnumber your friends
- The song of canaries Never varies, And when they’re moulting They’re pretty revolting.
- But children, hark! Your mother would rather, When you arrived, have been your father.
- Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
- Every Englishman knows one thing – that to be an Englishman is the best thing there is.
- Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.
- Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave, when they think that their children are naive.
- A man is quite dishonorable to sell himself, For anything other than quite a lot of pelf
- Middle age ends and senescence begins, the day your descendant’s outnumber your friends.
- The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.
- O thrice unhappy home Whose master doesn’t know the difference between a watt and an ohm!
- Children aren’t happy without something to ignore, And that’s what parents were created for
- If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.
- If you don’t want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.
- I don’t care how unkind the things people say about me so long as they don’t say them to my face.
- Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
- Someone invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation’s slumber, Ringing wrong but similar numbers
- In the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can’t
- The camel has a single hump, The dromedary, two; Or else the other way around; I’m never sure. Are you?
- Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.
- Some one invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation’s slumbers, Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
- Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I’m in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was.
- I’m like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I’m only forty-nine.
- There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I’m afraid it’s heading in the wrong direction.
- A cough is something that you yourself cant help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.
- A cough is something that you yourself can’t help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.
- The camel has a single hump;/ The dromedary, two;/ Or else the other way around./ I’m never sure. Are you?
- The dog is man’s best friend. He has a tail on one end. Up in front he has teeth. And four legs underneath.
- Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force.
- A husband is a man who two minutes after his head touches the pillow is snoring like an overloaded omnibus.
- No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.
- And you stagger down to break your fast. Greasy bacon and lacquered eggs And coffee composed of frigid dregs.
- A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
- Miranda in Miranda’s sight is old, gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty.
- One would be in less danger From the wiles of the stranger If one’s own kin and kith Were more fun to be with.
- A dressing is not a compote A dressing is not a custard It consists of pepper and salt, Vinegar, oil and mustard.
- People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they don’t want it.
- Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.
- I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.
- Middle-age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.
- People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.
- We love the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt.
- The sky is now indelible ink, The branches reft asunder; But you and I we do not shrink; We love the lovely thunder.
- I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.
- One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it/Never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.
- I have an idea that the phrase weaker sex was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.
- I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
- I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.
- Maybe I couldn’t be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after.
- Certainly there are things in life that money can’t buy, but it’s very funny – Did you ever try buying them without money?
- And one of his partners asked Has he vertigo? and the other glanced out and down and said Oh no, only about ten feet more.
- A husband is a guy who tells you when you’ve got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
- Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
- I drink because she nags, she said I nag because he drinks. But if the truth be known to you, He’s a lush and she’s a shrew.
- To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.
- Basketball, a game which won’t be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo.
- I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
- There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees.
- The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
- I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
- Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,/ Is those things arms, or is they legs?/ I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I’d call me Us.
- This is my dream, It is my own dream, I dreamt it. I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
- I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
- The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Gives us ham and pork and Bacon. Let others think his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.
- Don’t over-analyze your marriage; it’s like yanking up a fragile indoor plant every 20 minutes to see how its roots are growing.
- When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born.
- The codfish is a staple food For which I’m seldom in the mood. This fish is such an utter loss That people eat it with egg sauce.
- There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
- And one of his partners asked ”Has he vertigo?” and the other glanced out and down and said ”Oh no, only about ten feet more.”
- The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon. Let others say his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.
- One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and>metaphor.
- If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn’t make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.
- I have a bone to pick with Fate / Come here and tell me, girlie, / Do you think my mind is maturing late,/ Or simply rotting early?
- Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who cannot sleep with window shut, and a woman who cannot sleep with the window open.
- Good wine needs no bush, and perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot.
- Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won’t buy, but it’s very funny- Have you ever tried to buy them without money?
- Dogs display reluctance and wrath If you try to give them a bath. They bury bones in hideaways And half the time they trot sideaways.
- A lady wants to be dressed exactly like everybody else but she gets pretty up- set if she sees anybody else dressed exactly like her.
- The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile.
- I test my bath before I sit, And I’m always moved to wonderment That what chills the finger not a bit Is so frigid upon the fundament.
- Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody’s reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.
- My verse represents a handle I can grasp in order not to yield to the centrifugal forces which are trying to throw me off of the world.
- The truth I do not stretch or shove When I state the dog is full of love. I’ve also proved, by actual test, A wet dog is the lovingest.
- Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.
- Then here’s to the heartening wassail, Wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
- Stuyvesant chats with Kelly and Katz, The professor warms to the broker, And life is good in the brotherhood Of an air-conditioned smoker.
- Some primal termite knocked on wood. And tasted it, and found it good. And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today.
- Some hate broccoli, some hate bacon I hate having my picture taken. How can your family claim to love you And then demand a picture of you?
- I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
- To maintain your marriage brimming, with really like in the wedding cup, anytime you are incorrect, admit it each time you’re proper, shut up.
- I don’t mind their having a lot of money, and I don’t care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
- Snow is all right while it is snowing; it is like inebriation because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.
- The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher, Were each of them once a kiddie. A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature. Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
- If some confectioners were willing To let the shape announce the filling, We’d encounter fewer assorted chocs, Bitten into and returned to the box.
- People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces properly if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the 25th of December
- How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?
- The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
- Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord’s anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can’t get your fingers on him.
- The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can’t cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.
- Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
- It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral: In real life it takes only one to make a quarrel.
- Hark to the whimper of the seagull. / He weeps because he’s not an ea-gull. / Suppose you were, you silly seagull. / Could you explain it to your she-gull?
- There is something about a martini, Ere the dining and dancing begin, And to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth- I think that perhaps it’s the gin.
- There was a young man of Herne Bay who was making some fireworks one day: but he dropped his cigar in the gunpowder jar. There was a young man of Herne Bay.
- You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,/ Through funeral parlors and honky-tonks./ From river to river you comb the town/ For a place to lay your family down.
- The highest form of wisdom is to get drunk and go to pieces. The highest form of wisdom is to get drunk and go to pieces. Candy is dandy But liquor is quicker.
- There once was an umpire whose vision Was cause for abuse and derision He remarked in surprise, ‘Why pick on my eyes? It’s my heart that dictates my decision.’
- The oboe’s a horn made of wood. I’d play you a tune if I could, But the reeds are a pain, And the fingering’s insane. It’s the ill wind that no one blows good.
- A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books – Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.
- Time is so old and love so brief, love is pure gold and time a thief. We’re late, darling, we’re late, The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon.
- Humor is hope’s companion in arms. It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.
- I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.
- The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing, Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.
- An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks.
- O money, money, money. I’m not necessarily one of those who think thee holy, but I often stop to wonder how thou canst go out so fast when thou comest in so slowly.
- There are people who are very resourceful, at being remorseful, and who apparently feel that the best way to make friends is to do something terrible and then make amends.
- Your hair may be brushed, but your mind’s untidy. You’ve had about seven hours of sleep since Friday. No wonder you feel that lost sensation. You’re sunk from a riot of relaxation.
- I myself am more and more inclined to agree with Omar and Satchel Paige as I grow older: Don’t try to rewrite what the moving finger has writ, and don’t ever look over your shoulder.
- There is one fault that I must find With the twentieth century. And I’ll put it in a couple of words; Too adventury. What I’d like would be some nice dull monotony If anyone’s gotony.
- Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons, or Celts, Can’t seem just to say anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
- Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder, Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives being embarrassed by our parents and the last part being embarrassed by our children.
- It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important
- Now, anybody whom a German hates, He presently exterminates, But he who exterminates a French Is never safe from Gallic revenge, But he who gets even with a German Is obliterated like a vermin
- They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball.
- The noblest lord is ushered in By the practicing physician, And the humblest lout is ushered out By a certified mortician. And in between, they find their foyers Alive with summonses from lawyers.
- Tonight’s December thirty-first, something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, like a time bomb in the hall. Hark, it’s midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year!
- The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
- The doctor gets you when you’re born, The preacher, when you marry, And the lawyer lurks with costly clerks If too much on you carry. Professional men, they have no cares; Whatever happens, they get theirs.
- People expect old men to die, They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look At them with eyes that wonder when … People watch with unshocked eyes; But the old men know when an old man dies.
- Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as legislature…. So people who go to bed to sleep Must count French premiers or sheep, And people who ought to arise from bed Yawn and go back to sleep instead.
- So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat Over everything debatable and combatable Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life Particularly if he has income and she is pattable.
- So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it, And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it, And the fetters gave him welts, And they named America after somebody else.
- Here is a pen and here is a pencil, here’s a typewriter, here’s a stencil, here’s a list of today’s appointments, and all the flies in all the ointments, the daily woes that a man endures — take them, George, they’re yours!
- Ten years ago she split the air To seize what she could spy Tonight she bumps against a chair, Betrayed by milky eye. She seems to pant, Time up, time up! My little dog must die, And lie in dust with Hector’s pup; I So, presently, must I.
- Daybreak is one of the greatest disadvantages of living under the solar system: It means having to get up almost the very minute you go to bed, And bathe and shave and scrub industriously at your molar system And catch a train and go to the office an
- Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
- So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don’t spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.
- Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with. And with whom they breakfast with and sup with. They interfere with the discipline of nurseries, And forget anniversaries, And when they have been particularly remiss, They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss.
- But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
- Here’s a toast to the roast that good fellowship lends, with the sparkle of beer and wine; May its sentiment always be deeper, my friends, than the foam at the top of the stein. Then here’s to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
- Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you’re given, The less you lead, the more you’re driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
- Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit… So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don’t have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.
