Ogden Nash Quotes

Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.

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.

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.

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.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

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

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.

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.

Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.

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.

Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.

Winter is the king of showmen, Turning tree stumps into snowmen And houses into birthday cakes And spreading sugar over lakes. Smooth and clean and frosty white, The world looks good enough to bite. That’s the season to be young, Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Snow is snowy when it’s snowing, I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going.

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.

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.

If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.

Some debts are fun while you are acquiring them, But none are fun when you set about retiring them.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

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.

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!

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and>metaphor.

There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I'm afraid it's heading in the wrong direction.

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

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.

No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.

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

Remorse is violent dyspepsia of the mind.

When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.

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.

Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.

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.

Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.

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

Too much Chablis can make you whablis.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

No man is greater than his respect for sleep.

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.

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.

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.

I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.

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.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn't have missed it.

When I ponder my mind I consistently find It is glued On food.

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

When there are monsters there are miracles.