Ogden Nash Quotes

Oh, things are frequently what they seem,
And this is wisdom's crown:
Only the game fish swims upstream,
But the sensible fish swims down.

Candy Is Dandy But liquor Is quicker.

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when…
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.

A WORD TO HUSBANDS

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

Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
But you need an orgy, once in a while.

(from HOME, 99 44/100% SWEET HOME)

Excerpted from A PLEA FOR A LEAGUE OF SLEEP

... My life with joy is sometimes fraught,
But mostly when I'm doing naught.
Yea, I could spend my whole career
A pillow underneath my ear.
How wise was he who wittily said
That there is nothing like a bed.
A mattress is what I like to creep on;
The right side is the one I sleep on.

...Stalin and Hitler while they sleep
Are harmless as a baby sheep;
Tyrants who cause the earth to quake
Are only dangerous when awake.
This world would be a happier place,
And happier the human race,
And all our pilots be less Pontius,
If people spent more time unconscious.

I like the duck-billed platypus
Because it is anomalous.
I like the way it raises its family
Partly birdly, partly mammaly.
I like its independent attitude.
Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude.

I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.

Where there is a monster, there is a miracle

I am tarred and feathered with Time.

I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.

Cuckoos lead Bohemian lives,
They fail as husbands and as wives,
Therefore they cynically disparage
Everybody else's marriage

- Ogden Nash, The Cucko

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on far too long.

Very Like a Whale

The trouble with a kitten is THAT
Eventually it becomes a CAT