Ogden Nash Quotes

185 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ogden Nash
He was an eminent etymologist, which is to say he knew nothing but bugs. He could tell the Coleoptera from the Lepidoptera, And the Aphidae and the Katydididae from the Grasshoptera.

Ogden Nash
For half a century, man and nipper, I've doted on a tasty kipper, But since I am no Jack the Ripper I wish the kipper had a zipper.

Ogden Nash
I don't care how unkind the things people say about me so long as they don't say them to my face.

Ogden Nash
Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it.

Ogden Nash
The toucan's profile is prognathous, Its person is a thing of bathos. If even I can tell a toucan I'm reasonably sure that you can.

Ogden Nash
The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions is by their actions

Ogden Nash
This creature fills its mouth with venom And walks upon its duodenum. He who attempts to tease the cobra Is soon a sadder he, and sobra.

Ogden Nash
The grackle's voice is less than mellow, His heart is black, his eye is yellow, He bullies more attractive birds With hoodlum deeds and vulgar words, And should a human interfere, Attacks that human in the rear. I cannot help but deem the grackle An ornithological debacle.

Ogden Nash
How many Scientists have written The shark is gentle as a kitten! Yet this I know about the shark: His bite is worser than his bark.

Ogden Nash