Top 160 Ogden Nash Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.”

— Ogden Nash

2. “Time is like the ocean, always there, always different.”

— Ogden Nash

3. “God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.”

— Ogden Nash

4. “Time is so old and love so brief, love is pure gold and time a thief. We’re late, darling, we’re late, The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon.”

— Ogden Nash

5. “Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.”

— Ogden Nash

6. “Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.”

— Ogden Nash

7. “When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born.”

— Ogden Nash

8. “Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.”

— Ogden Nash

Featured in: Goodbye Quotes

9. “Here’s a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.”

— Ogden Nash

10. “Wind is caused by the trees waving their branches.”

— Ogden Nash

11. “Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.”

— Ogden Nash

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

— Ogden Nash

13. “The dog is man’s best friend. He has a tail on one end. Up in front he has teeth. And four legs underneath.”

— Ogden Nash

14. “The turtle lives ’twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile.”

— Ogden Nash

15. “Some hate broccoli, some hate bacon I hate having my picture taken. How can your family claim to love you And then demand a picture of you?”

— Ogden Nash

16. “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!”

— Ogden Nash

17. “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

— Ogden Nash

18. “Middle age ends and senescence begins, the day your descendant’s outnumber your friends.”

— Ogden Nash

19. “Progress might have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long.”

— Ogden Nash

20. “People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.”

— Ogden Nash

21. “Only the gamefish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down.”

— Ogden Nash

22. “I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.”

— Ogden Nash

23. “Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.”

— Ogden Nash

24. “A jolly young fellow from Yuma Told an elephant joke to a puma; now his skeleton lies beneath hot western skies- the puma had no sense of huma.”

— Ogden Nash

25. “Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads, And not the road.”

— Ogden Nash

26. “When there are monsters there are miracles.”

— Ogden Nash

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

— Ogden Nash

28. “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.”

— Ogden Nash

29. “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

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

— Ogden Nash

31. “This is my dream, It is my own dream, I dreamt it. I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.”

— Ogden Nash

32. “How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!”

— Ogden Nash

33. “He is not drunk, who from the floor, can rise and stand and shout for more.”

— Ogden Nash

34. “Shake and shake The catsup bottle. None will come, And then a lot’ll.”

— Ogden Nash

35. “Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art.”

— Ogden Nash

36. “The old men know when an old man dies.”

— Ogden Nash

37. “One bliss for which There is no match Is when you itch To up and scratch.”

— Ogden Nash

38. “When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.”

— Ogden Nash

39. “I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl?”

— Ogden Nash

40. “I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.”

— Ogden Nash

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

— Ogden Nash

42. “Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.”

— Ogden Nash

Featured in: Fun Quotes

43. “Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how.”

— Ogden Nash

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

— Ogden Nash

45. “No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.”

— Ogden Nash

46. “There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees.”

— Ogden Nash

47. “The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can’t cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.”

— Ogden Nash

48. “The codfish is a staple food For which I’m seldom in the mood. This fish is such an utter loss That people eat it with egg sauce.”

— Ogden Nash

49. “Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody’s reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.”

— Ogden Nash

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

— Ogden Nash