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
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
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: Aging, Memory
I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Greatness
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
Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Past, Reflection
No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Grieving, Grief
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: Money, Thrift
I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Conscience
O misery, misery, mumble and moan!
Someone invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation’s slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Technology
If some confectioners were willing
To let the shape announce the filling,
We’d encounter fewer assorted chocs,
Bitten into and returned to the box.
—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
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Friendship
Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Fun
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: Taxation, Seasons
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Life and Living, Life
A little incompatibility is the spice of life, as long as he has income and she is pattable.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Marriage
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.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Integrity, Happiness, Conscience
You can take it as understood That your luck changes only if it’s good.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Luck
Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Hope
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Dogs
My garden will never make me famous, I’m a horticultural ignoramus.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Gardening
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
Topics: Women, Men & Women
How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Diet
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
Good wine needs no bush, and perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Advertising
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: Politicians, Politics
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Civilization, Progress
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Work, Money, Jobs
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Russell Hoban American Author
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
Helen Gurley Brown American Publisher
Mark Van Doren American Poet, Critic
Wallace Stevens American Poet
Will Rogers American Humorist, Actor
Frank O’Hara American Poet, Art Critic
Conrad Aiken American Poet, Novelist
Stanley Kunitz American Poet
Henry Adams American Historian