Ogden Nash

“There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,Because I think that is sort of sweet;No, I object to one kind of apology alone,Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.You go to their house for a meal,And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,And what particularly bores me with them,Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.”

“Unwillingly Miranda wakes,Feels the sun with terror,One unwilling step she takes,Shuddering to the mirror.Miranda in Miranda's sightIs 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 whirlAdorned as he adored you.Time is timelessness for you;Calendars for the human;What's a year, or thirty, toLoveliness 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?”

“Man is a victim of dopeIn the incurable form of hope!”

“How easy for those who do not bulgeTo not overindulge!”

“He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance.”

“either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow”

“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”

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

“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South StationAnd not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”

“Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasn't a baby ought to have a baby,Which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie,The idea apparently being that just by being fruitfulYou are doing something beautiful,Which if it is trueMeans that the common housefly is several million times more beautiful than me or you.”

“The Bronx? No Thonx!”

“Which the Chicken and Which the Egg?He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;She thinks she scolds because he drinks;And nether will admit what's true,That he's a sot and she's a shrew.”

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,Something is about to burst.The clock is crouching, dark and small,Like a time bomb in the hall.Hark, it's midnight, children dear.Duck! Here comes another year!”

“I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.”

“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.~ Ogden Nash”

“More than a catbird hates a cat,Or a criminal hates a clue,Or the Axis hates the United States,That's how much I love you.I love you more than a duck can swim,And more than a grapefruit squirts,I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,And more than a toothache hurts.As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,Or a juggler hates a shove,As a hostess detests unexpected guests,That's how much you I love.I love you more than a wasp can sting,And more than the subway jerks,I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,And more than a hangnail irks.I swear to you by the stars above,And below, if such there be,As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,That's how you're loved by me.”

“Hark to the sky of a seagull!He cries because he's not an eagle.Oh, what if you were you silly he-gull?What would you say to your she-gull?”

“My fellow man I do not care for.I often ask me, What's he there for?The only answer i can findIs, Reproduction of his kind.”

“Too clever is dumb.”

“Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.”

“Baclli swarm within my portalsSuch as ne'r conceived by mortals,But, bred by scientists,Wise and hoary in some Olympian laboratory.Bacteria as large as miceWith feet of fire and heads of ice,Who never interrupt for slumberTheir stomping, elephantine rumba.( From the poem--- " The Common Cold " )”

“Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,She lays eggs for gentlemen.Gentlemen come every dayTo count what my black hen doth lay.If perchance she lays too many,They fine my hen a pretty penny;If perchance she fails to lay,The gentlemen a bonus pay.Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,She’s cooperating now.At first she didn’t understandThat milk production must be planned;She didn’t understand at firstShe either had to plan or burst,But now the government reportsShe’s giving pints instead of quarts.Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,They are giggling at their labors.First they plant the tiny seed,Then they water, then they weed,Then they hoe and prune and lop,They they raise a record crop,Then they laugh their sides asunder,And plow the whole caboodle under.Abracadabra, thus we learnThe more you create, the less you earn.The less you earn, the more you’re given,The less you lead, the more you’re driven,The more destroyed, the more they feed,The more you pay, the more they need,The more you earn, the less you keep,And now I lay me down to sleep.I pray the Lord my soul to takeIf the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.”

“If some confectioners were willingTo let the shape announce the filling,We'd encounter fewer assorted chocs,Bitten into and returned to the box.”

“Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how. Some people think they will eventually wear diamonds instead of rhinestones Only by everlastingly keeping their noses to their ghrinestones”

“LIFE BEGINS AT THE END OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE”

“You can have my jellyfishI am not sellyfish”

“There’s nothing that keeps it’s youthSo far as I know, but a tree and the truth”

“If called by a panther, don't anther”

“How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.Your wife can’t be a banshee—Or can she?”

“A jolly young fellow from YumaTold an elephant joke to a puma;now his skeleton liesbeneath hot western skies-the puma had no sense of huma”

“Sure deck your lower limbs in pants; Yours are the limbs, my sweeting. You look divine as you advance– Have you seen yourself retreating?”

“Snow is all right while it is snowing; it is like inebriation because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.”

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.”

“Elephants are useful friends: they have handles on both ends.”

“We Don't Need to Leave Yet, Do We? Or, Yes We DoOne kind of person when catching a train always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus, And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous, And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets, And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral rickets. One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and hastens off to the play, And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee, And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is positively sumptuous, Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical than bumptious. And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room while the train is made up in the yards, can never understand, Is the injustice of the second kind's reaching their scat just as the train moves out, just as they had planned,And what the second kind cannot understand as they stumble over the first kind's heel just as the footlights flash on at last Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least bit foolish at having entered the theater before the cast. Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second kind always wants to tarry, Which wouldn't make any difference, except that each other is what they always marry.”

“The trouble with a kitten is that....... It eventually becomes a cat!”

“The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually becomes a cat.”

“Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.”

“Senescence begins And middle-age ends The day your descendants Outnumber your friends”

“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 thriftyAnd 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.”

“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.”

“If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.”

“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.”

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.”

“Certainly there are things in life that money can’t buy, but it’s very funny – Did you ever try buying them without money.”

“I have an idea that the phrase “weaker sex” was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm. ”

“Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.”

“I give you now Professor TwistThe conscientious scientist.Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles”And sent him off to distant jungles.Camped on a tropic riversideOne 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.!”

“Professional men, they have no cares;Whatever happens, they get theirs.”

“Bugs. Adam had'em.”