Quotes by Ogden Nash

Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasnt a baby ought to have a baby,Which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie,The idea apparently being that just by being fruitfulYou are doing something beautiful,Which if it is trueMeans that the common housefly is several million times more beautiful than me or you.

Where there is a monster, there is a miracle.

To keep your marriage brimming,With love in the loving cup,Whenever youre wrong, admit it;Whenever youre right, shut up.~Happy birthday Ogden Nash! (born 8.19.1902)

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

Very Like a WhaleOne thing that literature would be greatly the better forWould be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,Cants seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but haveto go out of their way to say that it is like something else.What foes it mean when we are toldThat the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experienceTo know that it probably wasnt just one Assyrian, it was a lotof Assyrians.However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,Well 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 wolfon the fold?In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy thereare a great many things,But i dont imagine that among then there is a wolf with purpleand gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.No, no, Lord Byron, before Ill 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 redmouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,at the very most,Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.But that wasnt fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he hadto invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolatethem,With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiersto people they say Oh yes, theyre the ones that a lotof wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.Thats the kind of thing thats being done all the time by poets,from Homer to Tennyson;Theyre always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanketafter a winter storm.Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanketof snow and Ill sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoeticalblanket material and well see which one keeps warm,And after that maybe youll begin to comprehend dimly,What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

Parsley is gharsley.

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

...I would not engage the wombatIn any form of mortal combat.

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

I am tarred and feathered with Time.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

The Bronx? No Thonx!

In the world of mulesThere are no rules.

Middle age: when youre sitting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isnt for you.

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

If called by a panther Dont anther.

Middle age is when you have met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else and usually is.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybodys reach And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.

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