Quotes by "Ogden Nash"

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

Senescence begins And middle age ends, The day your descendants Outnumber your friends.

Middle age is when you have met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else and usually is.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

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

Poets aren't very useful, because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental.

Higgledy piggledy, my black hen, She lays eggs for gentlemen. Gentlemen come every day To count what my black hen doth lay. If perchance she lays too many, They fine my hen a pretty penny; If perchance she fails to lay, The gentlemen a bonus pay. Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow, She’s cooperating now. At first she didn’t understand That milk production must be planned; She didn’t understand at first She either had to plan or burst, But now the government reports She’s giving pints instead of quarts. Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors, They are giggling at their labors. First they plant the tiny seed, Then they water, then they weed, Then they hoe and prune and lop, They they raise a record crop, Then they laugh their sides asunder, And plow the whole caboodle under. Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you’re given, The less you lead, the more you’re driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.

How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle, And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle. What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me? I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me. Your wife can’t be a banshee— Or can she?

Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.

Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.

Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.

There are people who are very resourceful, at being remorseful, and who apparently feel that the best way to make friends is to do something terrible and then make amends.

I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.

I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.