Ogden Quotes & Sayings

Elephants are useful friends: they have handles on both ends. — Ogden Nash

Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots, I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better. — David Ogden Stiers

In television you go in with this operating system that it is a crapshoot. — David Ogden Stiers

I could not eat a kangaroo. But many fine Australians do. Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs Prefer him in tasty kangaroo-meringues. — Ogden Nash

I have an idea that the phrase "weaker sex" was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm. — Ogden Nash

In real life, it takes only one to make a quarrel. — Ogden Nash

All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart. — 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

I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet. — Ogden Nash

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

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. — Ogden Nash

I myself am more and more inclined to agree with Omar and Satchel Paige as I grow older: Don't try to rewrite what the moving finger has writ, and don't ever look over your shoulder. — Ogden Nash

The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience. — William B. Ogden

The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin. — Ogden Nash

A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books - Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage. — Ogden Nash

Philo Vance / Needs a kick in the pance. — Ogden Nash

The old men know when an old man dies. — Ogden Nash

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

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state the dog is full of love.
I've also proved, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest. — Ogden Nash

I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again. — David Ogden Stiers

The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually becomes a cat. — Ogden Nash

Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain't. — Ogden Nash

Humor is the best means of surviving in a difficult world. — Ogden Nash

The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if
some kind of sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing. — Ogden Nash

I give you now Professor Twist
The conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside
One day he missed his lovely bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
You mean," he said "a crocodile.! — Ogden Nash

No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed. — Ogden Nash

Celery, raw,
Develops the jaw — Ogden Nash

Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as legislature ... So people who go to bed to sleep Must count French premiers or sheep, And people who ought to arise from bed Yawn and go back to sleep instead. — Ogden Nash

Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends — Ogden Nash

When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born. — Ogden Nash

If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate. — Ogden Nash

A Caution to Everybody
consider the Auk.
Becoming extinct before because he forgot out to fly and could only walk.
Consider Man, who may well become extinct,
Because he forgot how to walk and learned to fly before he thinked. — Ogden Nash

The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk. — Ogden Nash

I had a meeting in LA in which they took a really overstuffed hour and a half. It was as close to old Hollywood as I remembered it in the last 20 years. — David Ogden Stiers

Maybe I couldn't be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after. — Ogden Nash

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 — Ogden Nash

How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge! — Ogden Nash

But all ladies think they weigh too much. — Ogden Nash

He is sharp," admitted the colonel, "but that's all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he's got no dignity, and no learnin', and what he don't know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw." "Land's — George W. Ogden

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. — Ogden Nash

What we have to get clear to kids is that when you offer your stillness and open yourself to the experience of music, it pays you back more than you give. — David Ogden Stiers

The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat. — Ogden Nash

Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills! — Charles Ogden

He without benefit of scruples - His fun and money soon quadruples. — Ogden Nash

If called by a panther, don't anther. — Ogden Nash

One thing about the past. It's likely to last. — Ogden Nash

So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it, And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it, And the fetters gave him welts, And they named America after somebody else. — Ogden Nash

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

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

No man is greater than his respect for sleep. — Ogden Nash

Too clever is dumb. — Ogden Nash

People are nice enough, but you can hear the giant tick of the second hand. People are so harried. — David Ogden Stiers

Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
But I like an orgy, once in a while. — Ogden Nash

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

The Bronx? No Thonx! — Ogden Nash

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

Pat Ogden and Peter Levine have each developed powerful body-based therapies, sensorimotor psychotherapy29 and somatic experiencing — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

What's nice about both clouds, and art, is that you can look at them and just resonate. That can be good for both the heart and the mind. — Ogden W. Rogers

Something happens to us all when we experience something as a unit that doesn't occur when we're on our couches or holding our little portable DVD players. — David Ogden Stiers

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him. — Ogden Nash

A lot affects the outcome. It boils down to scheduling and the commitment of the network. — David Ogden Stiers

No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done. — Ogden Nash

He made a careful rehearsal of some of their bits of talk
why had she said this? what had she meant by that? why had she done the other? He dwelt on these matters with an absorbed speculation, and with a young man of Ogden's temperament speculation was but the first step on the way to love. — Henry Blake Fuller

This is my dream, It is my own dream, I dreamt it. I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it. — Ogden Nash

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

Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods, has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which any one can get into. — J. Ogden Armour

I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old, — Ogden Nash

I test my bath before I sit, And I'm always moved to wonderment That what chills the finger not a bit Is so frigid upon the fundament. — Ogden Nash

I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it. — Ogden Nash

Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood All Right — Ogden Nash

At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation. — Ogden Nash

There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees. — Ogden Nash

Where there is a monster, the wise American poet Ogden Nash told us, there is a miracle. — Neil Gaiman

The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon.
Let others say his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig. — Ogden Nash

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

We love the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt. — Ogden Nash

Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind, But it is very difficult to treat because it cannot even be defined, Because everything is not gold that glisters and everything is not a tear that glistens, And one man's remorse is another man's reminiscence — Ogden Nash

When you're wrong admit it, when you're right, shut up. — Ogden Nash

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

Ogden Nash wrote a line that I have always remembered: "The old men know when an old man dies." With the years, that line has become ever more poignant to me. After all, an old person to one who has known him for a long time is not an "old person" but is much more likely to be thought of as the younger person who inhabits our memory, vigorous and vibrant. When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies. And though you survive yourself, you must watch death take away the world of your youth, little by little. — Isaac Asimov

I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl? — Ogden Nash

If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work. — Ogden Nash

The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. — Ogden Nash

Time is so old and love so brief, love is pure gold and time a thief. We're late, darling, we're late, The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon. — Ogden Nash

And you stagger down to break your fast. Greasy bacon and lacquered eggs And coffee composed of frigid dregs. — Ogden Nash

When a lady's erotic life is vexed God knows what God is coming next. — Ogden Nash

People can't concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December. — Ogden Nash

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We'll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We'll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We'll remind each other it's smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We'll bus for miles on holidays
For seas at depressing matinees,
And every Sunday we'll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
You'll probably up and cut my throat. — Ogden Nash

A dressing is not a compote A dressing is not a custard It consists of pepper and salt, Vinegar, oil and mustard. — Ogden Nash

When I ponder my mind I consistently find It is glued On food. — Ogden Nash

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. — Ogden Nash

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

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

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda? — Ogden Nash

Bankers are just like everybody else, except richer. — Ogden Nash

The dog is man's best friend. He has a tail on one end. Up in front he has teeth. And four legs underneath. — 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

The codfish is a staple food For which I'm seldom in the mood. This fish is such an utter loss That people eat it with egg sauce. — Ogden Nash

You are much happier when you are happy than when you ain't. — Ogden Nash

The reason for much matrimony is patrimony. — Ogden Nash

Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force. — Ogden Nash

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it. — Ogden Nash