Ogden Nash Quotes

I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.

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.

A lady is known by the product she endorses.

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.

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!

Humor is the best means of surviving in a difficult world.

If called by a panther, don't anther.

Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads, And not the road.

I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.

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.

In the world of mules
There are no rules.

He is not drunk, who from the floor, can rise and stand and shout for more

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.

The reason for much matrimony is patrimony.

Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it.

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

Elephants are useful friends: they have handles on both ends.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain't.

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.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

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.

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.

Wind is caused by the trees waving their branches.

I claim there ain't Another Saint As great as Valentine.

But all ladies think they weigh too much.

Celery, raw,
Develops the jaw

All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart.

No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done.

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.

Where there is a monster, there is a miracle.

One thing about the past. It's likely to last.

Neath tile or thatch That man is rich Who has a scratch For every itch.

Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi;
Consider the Empire and Gandhi.

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.

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.

One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it/Never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.

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.

Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind, But it is very difficult to treat because it cannot even be defined, Because everything is not gold that glisters and everything is not a tear that glistens, And one man's remorse is another man's reminiscence

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.

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.

But children, hark! Your mother would rather, When you arrived, have been your father.

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We'll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We'll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We'll remind each other it's smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We'll bus for miles on holidays
For seas at depressing matinees,
And every Sunday we'll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
You'll probably up and cut my throat.

Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how. Some people think they will eventually wear diamonds instead of rhinestones Only by everlastingly keeping their noses to their ghrinestones

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it.

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.

A jolly young fellow from Yuma
Told an elephant joke to a puma;
now his skeleton lies
beneath hot western skies-
the puma had no sense of huma

I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl?

To love is an active verb.

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.

I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.

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.

It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.

Miranda in Miranda's sight is old, gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty.

You can have my jellyfish
I am not sellyfish

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.

We Don't Need to Leave Yet, Do We? Or, Yes We Do

One kind of person when catching a train always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus,
And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous,
And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets,
And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral rickets.
One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and hastens off to the play,
And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee,
And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is positively sumptuous,
Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical than bumptious.
And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room while the train is made up in the yards, can never understand,
Is the injustice of the second kind's reaching their scat just as the train moves out, just as they had planned,
And what the second kind cannot understand as they stumble over the first kind's heel just as the footlights flash on at last
Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least bit foolish at having entered the theater before the cast.
Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second kind always wants to tarry,
Which wouldn't make any difference, except

You can take it as understood,
That your luck changes only if it's good.

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 GRACKLE
The

No man is greater than his respect for sleep.

When a lady's erotic life is vexed God knows what God is coming next.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.

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.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

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.

Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends

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.

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.

When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
~ Ogden Nash

A dog's best friend is his illiteracy.

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance.

Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful..

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.

Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I'm in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was.

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?

How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,
And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.
What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?
I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.
Your wife can't be a banshee
Or can she?

Were it not for frustration and humiliation
I suppose the human race would get ideas above its station.

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.
I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.
As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.
I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.
I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're loved by me.

Progress is a fine thing, but it's gone on long enough.

Behold the Zebra on the plains, And shudder at his mighty manes!

Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you.

I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.

ADVENTURES OF ISABEL
Isabel

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out
of their way to say that it is like something else.
What foes it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot
of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus
hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf
on
the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there
are
a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple
and gold
cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and
big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Fra

There's nothing that keeps it's youth
So far as I know, but a tree and the truth

Here's a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.

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.

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.

In real life, it takes only one to make a quarrel.

A dressing is not a compote A dressing is not a custard It consists of pepper and salt, Vinegar, oil and mustard.

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.

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.

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.

God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.

Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood All Right

When you're wrong admit it, when you're right, shut up.

Bankers are just like everybody else, except richer.

Some one invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation's slumbers, Ringing wrong but similar numbers.