Ogden Nash Quotes

185 Sourced Quotes

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

Ogden Nash
Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?

Ogden Nash
Professional men, they have no cares;
Whatever happens, they get theirs.

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

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

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

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

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
When smut's to be smitten
Smoot will smite
For G-d, for country,
And Fahrenheit.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
The dog is man's best friend. He has a tail on one end. Up in front he has teeth. And four legs underneath.

Ogden Nash
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

Ogden Nash
Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.

Ogden Nash
Oh, than to enjoy a storm like this
There's nothing I would rather,
Don't dive between the blankets, Miss!
Or else leave room for Father.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party's over.

Ogden Nash
Man is a victim of dope
In the incurable form of hope.

Ogden Nash
Tonight's December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst…
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!

Ogden Nash
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry.
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.

Ogden Nash
If you should happen after dark
To find yourself in Central Park
Ignore the paths that beckon you
And hurry, hurry to the zoo
And creep into the tiger's lair.
Frankly you'll be safer there.

Ogden Nash
Whether elected or appointed
He considers himself the Lord's annointed,
And indeed the ointment lingers on him
So thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Ogden Nash
The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.

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

Ogden Nash
The further through life I drift
The more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.

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

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash