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
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Dogs
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
Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Reflection, Past
Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Sleep
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
How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
—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
Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?
—Ogden Nash
Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
—Ogden Nash
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Life, Life and Living
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
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
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Civilization, Progress
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
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Parents
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Money, Work, Jobs
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
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
Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
—Ogden Nash
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Friendship
The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Thrift, Money
Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Birthdays
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: Men & Women, Women
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
The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can’t cure.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Opportunities, Reality
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Family, Children
I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Conscience
The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Sin
I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash
Topics: Greatness
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: Wealth, Riches
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
Stanley Kunitz American Poet
Conrad Aiken American Poet, Novelist
Frank O’Hara American Poet, Art Critic
Henry Adams American Historian