All Quotes by Ogden Nash
“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.”
“A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.”
“Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money?”
“Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.”
“A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.”
“To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.”
“Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.”
“Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money?”
“Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,”
“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're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.”
“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 hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.”
“Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money?”
“Candy Is quicker.”
“Oh, things are frequently what they seem,But the sensible fish swims down.”
“Man is a victim of dopeIn the incurable form of hope.”
“Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?”
“Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.”
“A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.”
“I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.”
“It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you oughtn't...”
“It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,That lays eggs under your skin.”
“The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but ifWell, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.”
“To keep your marriage brimming, Whenever you're right, shut up.”
“Good wine needs no bush,Look at pot.”
“Abracadabra, thus we learn, If the tax collector hasn't got it before I wake.”
“Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.”
“Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave When they think that their children are naive.”
“Behold the hippopotamus!I wonder how we look to him.”
“Any hound a porcupine nudgesAt a porcupine that sat on a splinter.”
“The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.”
“Once in a night as black as pitchBut she turned the witch into milk, and drank her.”
“The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.”
“She took those pills from the pill concocter,And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.”
“Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.) By and by.”
“Senator Smoot is an institute By reading them all himself.”
“Smite, Smoot, Is front-page stuff.”
“To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.”
“The cow is of the bovine ilk;One end is moo, the other, milk.”
“The song of canariesThey're pretty revolting.”
“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.”
“I can't say that I feel particularly one way or the other towards bell-boys,Their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.”
“The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.”
“Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.”
“I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.”
“One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.”
“Most bankers dwell in marble halls,Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.”
“Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.”
“How easy for those who do not bulgeTo not overindulge!”
“Whether elected or appointedSo thick you can't get your fingers on him.”
“Camped on a tropic riverside,"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."”
“There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.”
“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.”
“Listen, buds, it's March twenty first;Come on, gardeners, shed your coats!”
“If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.”
“Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia,And he was coming torgia…”
“There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, But they couldn't do without each other...”
“And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light, And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night.”
“Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.”
“God in his wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.”
“Some primal termite knocked on wood Fell through the parlor floor today.”
“The further through life I driftThe more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.”
“I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.”
“When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it.No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it.”
“These are enlightened days in which you can get hot water and cold water out of the same spigot,And everybody has something about which they are proud to be broad-minded but they also have other things about which you would be wasting your breath if you tried to convince them that they were a bigot.”
“And I have no desire to get ugly,But I cannot help mentioning that 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.”
“Naturally I am not pointing a finger at me,him than when I disagree.”
“O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge,And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view.”
“It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless,And it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going to tell it to you again regardless..."”
“And what really turns my corpuscles to ice,Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?”
“Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood All Right”
“Purity Is obscurity.”
“The turtle trapped 'twixt plated decks In such a fix to be so fertile.”
“I think that I shall never see I'll never see a tree at all.”
“When called by a panther,Don't anther.”
“People expect old men to die, But the old men know when an old man dies.”
“Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi;Consider the Empire and Gandhi.”
“It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictatorsIn real life it takes only one to make a quarrel.”
“People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it,But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.”
“Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing,Have you ever tried to buy them without money?”
“If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.”
“Miranda in Miranda's sight This morning she is thirty.”
“Silly girl, silver girl, Adorned as he adored you.”
“Time is timelessness for you; Loveliness made woman?”
“Oh, Night will not see thirty again, How old is Spring, Miranda?”
“Belinda lived in a little white house,And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.”
“Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.”
“Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.”
“The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,And Custard gobbled him, every bit.”
“How pleasant to sit on the beach,And nothing at all to be done!.”
“To lave in the wave,Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.”
“Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.”
“Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.”
“May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?I wish to retire till the party's over.”
“I've earned repose to heal the ravagesWould drive St. Francis from here to Natchez.”
“Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it,So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover”
“The weather is so very mildHere comes a thunderstorm.”
“The sky is now indelible ink,We love the lovely thunder.”
“The garden is a raging sea, Isn't the lightning darling?”
“Fear not the thunder, little one.Clapping their hands together.”
“I hope of lightning our supply For angels who are losted.”
“Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.”
“We love the kindly wind and hail,Of ampere, watt, and volt.”
“Oh, than to enjoy a storm like thisOr else leave room for Father.”
“My heart leaps up when I beholdThey marry little girls.”
“A fig for embryo Lohengrins!To marry somebody else's daughter.”
“Whales have calves, But guppies just have little guppies.”
“A young person is a person with nothing to learnundermine the self-confidence of which.”
“Being a fatherBut I like it, rather.”
“Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy,You're sunk from a riot of relaxation.”
“Indoors or out, no one relaxesThe taxes last us all the year.”
“Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else...”
“Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder,being embarrassed by our childer.”
“O Adolescence, O AdolescenceLord, how thou leavest things around! . . .”
“Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires,Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs.”
“The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.”
“Other people, and it doesn't matter if they are Scandinavians or Celts,Think that anything is better than theirs just because it belongs to somebody else.”
“I think that comparisons are truly odious, I do not approve of this constant proud or envious to-do;And furthermore, dear friends, I think that you and yours are delightful and I also think that me and mine are delightful too.”
“Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.”