Frederic Ogden Nash (1902–71) was an American writer of sophisticated light verse. He was perhaps one of the most commercially successful English-language poets of the twentieth century.
Born in Rye, New York, Nash studied at Harvard and worked in teaching, editing, selling bonds and copywriting, before dedicating himself to verse. He soon became a famous writer and frequently produced witty verse for The New Yorker.
Nash is renowned for his puns, epigrams, elaborate rhymes, ostentatious lack of rhymes, asymmetrical lines, and other verbal inclinations. He later disclosed that he acquired his distinct patterns of rhythm and sound from the unintentional gaffes of the American poetaster Julia Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan.”
Nash’s verse appeared in many collections from 1931 onwards: including Free Wheeling (1931,) Hard Lines (1931,) Parents Keep Out: Elderly Poems for Youngerly Readers (1951,) The Private Dining Room and Other New Verses (1953) and Boy is a Boy (1960.)
Nash also wrote the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and Two’s Company (1952,) as well as several children’s books. I Wouldn’t Have Missed It: Selected Poems of Ogden Nash was published in 1975.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ogden Nash
Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Professionalism
The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Thrift, Money
I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Greatness
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Wilderness, Just for Fun
A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Family
Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?
—Ogden Nash
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and money soon quadruples.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Morals
Here is a pen and here is a pencil, here’s a typewriter, here’s a stencil, here’s a list of today’s appointments, and all the flies in all the ointments, the daily woes that a man endures—take them, George, they’re yours!
—Ogden Nash
Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Hope
How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Diet
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Right, Marriage
They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Charity
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Dogs
Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Fun
Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Repentance, Forgiveness
I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Conscience
How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are;
One day a bachelor, the next a grampa.
What is the secret of the trick?
How did I get so old so quick?
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Memory, Aging
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
Topics: Work
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who cannot sleep with window shut, and a woman who cannot sleep with the window open.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Marriage
A little incompatibility is the spice of life, as long as he has income and she is pattable.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Marriage
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other milk.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Just for Fun, Animals
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.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Forgiveness
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Civilization, Progress
No man is greater than his respect for sleep.
—Ogden Nash
My garden will never make me famous, I’m a horticultural ignoramus.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Gardening
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Parenting, Family, Funny quotes, Children
And one of his partners asked “Has he vertigo?” and the other glanced out and down and said “Oh no, only about ten feet more.”
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Suicide
Some primal termite knocked on wood;
and tasted it, and found it good.
That is why your Cousin May
fell through the parlor floor today.
—Ogden Nash
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
Topics: Politics, Politicians
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
Topics: Wives, Marriage
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Parenting, Parents
Indoors or out, no one relaxes
In March, that month of wind and taxes,
The wind will presently disappear,
The taxes last us all year.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Seasons, Taxation
A husband is a guy who tells you when you’ve got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Husbands, Marriage
One man’s remorse is another man’s reminiscence.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Remorse
You can take it as understood That your luck changes only if it’s good.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Luck
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Friendship
Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Aging, Age
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Life, Life and Living
Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
—Ogden Nash
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: News
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