Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ogden Nash (American Comic Poet)

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

Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Family, Parenting, Children, Funny quotes

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

Your hair may be brushed, but your mind’s untidy. You’ve had about seven hours of sleep since Friday. No wonder you feel that lost sensation. You’re sunk from a riot of relaxation.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Leisure, Rest

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

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
Topics: Riches, Wealth

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Conscience

Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Forgiveness, Repentance

There is only one thing for a man to do who is married to a woman who enjoys spending money, and that is enjoy earning it.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Marriage

How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
Ogden Nash
Topics: Diet

You can take it as understood That your luck changes only if it’s good.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Luck

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other milk.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Animals, Just for Fun

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Life, Life and Living

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

A little incompatibility is the spice of life, as long as he has income and she is pattable.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Marriage

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

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

Candy, is dandy, but Liquor, is quicker.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism

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

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

Nothing there but basketball, a game which won’t be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo.
Ogden Nash

Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Birthdays

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

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: Marriage, Husbands

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: Just for Fun, Wilderness

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, Conscience, Happiness

Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
Ogden Nash

He without benefit of scruples
His fun and money soon quadruples.
Ogden Nash
Topics: Morals

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

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: Marriage, Right

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

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