Ogden Nash Quotations

To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.

The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.

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

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

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

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

Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.

Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.

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

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

The cow is of the bovine ilk: One end is moo, the other, milk.

I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.

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.

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

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

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

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 only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin.

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.

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

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Every new year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?

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

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.

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

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

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.

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

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

Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.

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

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.

Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?

Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money?

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

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

The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions/ Is by their actions.

Life is sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

Poets aren't very useful Because they aren't consumeful or produceful

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?

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?

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.

Someone invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation's slumber, Ringing wrong but similar numbers

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.

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.

Malt does more than Hubbard did to help us look into the Id

Middle age ends and senescence begins, The day your descendants outnumber your friends

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.

To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.

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

Every Englishman knows one thing - that to be an Englishman is the best thing there is.

Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.

Some tortures are physical and some are mental, but the one that's both is dental.

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.

Progress may have been all right once, but it has gone on too long

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

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

Any kiddies in school can love like a fool,/ But hating, my boy, is an art.

Bankers are just like everyone else only richer.

Bankers are just like anybody else, except richer

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.

A man is quite dishonorable to sell himself, For anything other than quite a lot of pelf

A cough is something that you yourself can't help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.

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

The camel has a single hump;/ The dromedary, two;/ Or else the other way around./ I'm never sure. Are you?

In the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can't

I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for

Home is heaven and orgies are vile/ But you need an orgy, once in a while.

The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat.

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.''

We love the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt.

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

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.

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

Only the gamefish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down.

One bliss for which There is no match Is when you itch To up and scratch.

A cough is something that you yourself cant help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.

If called by a panther, don't anther.

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.

Then blessings on thee, my afternoon torpor Thou makest a prince of a mental porpor.

The sky is now indelible ink, The branches reft asunder; But you and I we do not shrink; We love the lovely thunder.

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

The old men know when an old man dies.

In the world of mules there are no rules.

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.

How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!

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.

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.

Maybe I couldn't be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after.

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.

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.

To Tom Carlson or his dog-depending on whose taste it best suits.

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

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.

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.

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.