Ogden Nash citations

Page 2

“Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.”

“Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else…”

“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.”

“Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave
When they think that their children are naive.”

“Certainly there are things in life that money can’t buy, but it’s very funny –
Did you ever try buying them without money.”

“Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.”

“A jolly young fellow from Yuma
Told an elephant joke to a puma;
now his skeleton lies
beneath hot western skies-
the puma had no sense of huma”

“There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.”

“Progress is a fine thing, but it's gone on long enough.”

“Where there is a monster, there is a miracle.”

“Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.”

“either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow”

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.”

“Parsley is gharsley.”

“A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.”

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.”

“The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.”

“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
~ Ogden Nash”

“When called by a panther,
Don't anther.”

“I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.”

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

“The sky is now indelible ink,
The branches reft asunder;
But you and I we do not shrink;
We love the lovely thunder.”

“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.”

“O Adolescence, O Adolescence
I wince before thine incandescence...
When anxious elders swarm about
Crying "Where are you going?", thou answerest "Out,"...
Strewn! All is lost and nothing found
Lord, how thou leavest things around!...”

“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.”

“Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia,
And he was coming torgia…”

“Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach,
And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech,
Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say
Mr. Smith is in love with his wife.
Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life,
But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever,
Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever.”

“First
Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,
This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder.
A staggering child, a child astounding,
Dazzling, diaperless, dumfounding,
Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed,
A child to stagger and flabbergast,
Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,
And the only perfect one ever born.
Second
Arrived this evening at half-past nine.
Everybody is doing fine.
Is it a boy, or quite the reverse?
You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.”

“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.”