Ogden Nash Quotes

185 Sourced Quotes

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and>metaphor.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
Myself, I rather like the bat, It's not a mouse, it's not a rat. It has no feathers, yet has wings, It's quite inaudible when it sings. It zigzags through the evening air And never lands on ladies' hair, A fact of which men spend their lives Attempting to convince their wives.

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
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
The clam, esteemed by gourmets highly, Is said to live the life of Riley; When you are lolling on a piazza It's what you are as happy as a.

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

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

Ogden Nash
Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Ogden Nash
Senator Smoot is an institute
Not to be bribed with pelf;
He guards our homes from erotic tomes
By reading them all himself.

Ogden Nash
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.

Ogden Nash
The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

Ogden Nash
A young person is a person with nothing to learn
One who already knows that ice does not chill and fire does not burn...
It knows it can spend six hours in the sun on its first
day at the beach without ending up a skinless beet,
And it knows it can walk barefoot through the barn
without running a nail in its feet....
Meanwhile psychologists grow rich
Writing that the young are ones' should not
undermine the self-confidence of which.

Ogden Nash
How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!.

Ogden Nash
I've also proved by actual test, A wet dog is the lovingest.

Ogden Nash
A lady wants to be dressed exactly like everybody else but she gets pretty up- set if she sees anybody else dressed exactly like her.

Ogden Nash
The burnt child, urged by rankling ire, Can hardly wait to get back at the fire.

Ogden Nash
Be careful not to cross the gander, A bird composed of beak and dander, His heart is filled with prideful hate Of all the world except his mate. And if the neighbors do not err He's overfond of beating her. Is she happy? What's the use Of trying to psychoanalyze a goose?

Ogden Nash
Snow is all right while it is snowing; it is like inebriation because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.

Ogden Nash
There is nothing more perky Than a masculine turkey. When he struts he struts With no ifs or buts. When his face is apoplectic His harem grows hectic, And when he gobbles Their universe wobbles.

Ogden Nash
Some people's money is merited and other people's is inherited.

Ogden Nash
Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how.

Ogden Nash
Behold the duck. It does not cluck. A cluck it lacks. It quacks. It is specially fond Of a puddle or pond. When it dines or sups, It bottoms ups.

Ogden Nash