Ogden Nash Quotes

185 Sourced Quotes

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

Ogden Nash
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to
people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.

Ogden Nash
Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.

Ogden Nash
But children, hark! Your mother would rather, When you arrived, have been your father.

Ogden Nash
Oh, why does man pursue the smelt? It has no valuable pelt, It boasts of no escutcheon royal, It yields not ivory or oil, Its life is dull, its death is tame, A fish as humble as its name. Yet — take this salmon somewhere else, And bring me half a dozen smelts.

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

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
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
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
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons, or Celts, Can't seem just to say anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.

Ogden Nash
The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any three-l lllama.

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

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

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

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

Ogden Nash
Aunt Betsy was fixing to change her will, And would have left us out in the chill. Glossina morsitans bit Aunt Betsy Tsk, tsk, tsetse.

Ogden Nash
The python has, and I fib no fibs, 318 pairs of ribs. In stating this I place reliance On a séance with one who died for science. This figure is sworn to and attested; He counted them while being digested.

Ogden Nash
I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.

Ogden Nash