Quotes from Ogden Nash

I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.

Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long...

...The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.

I claim there ain't Another Saint As great as Valentine.

I think that I shall never seeA billboard lovely as a tree.Indeed, unless the billboards fallI'll never see a tree at all.

Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them.

Some one invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation's slumbers, Ringing wrong but similar numbers.

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decksWhich practically conceal its sex.I think it clever of the turtleIn such a fix to be so fertile.

I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.

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?

Women would rather be right than reasonable.

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.

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

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

There is something about a Martini,Ere the dining and dancing begin,And to tell you the truth,It is not the vermouth—I think that perhaps it's the gin.

I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

Winter is the king of showmen, Turning tree stumps into snowmen And houses into birthday cakes And spreading sugar over lakes. Smooth and clean and frosty white, The world looks good enough to bite. That's the season to be young, Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Snow is snowy when it's snowing, I'm sorry it's slushy when it's going.

Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as legislature.... So people who go to bed to sleep Must count French premiers or sheep, And people who ought to arise from bed Yawn and go back to sleep instead.

So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it, And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it, And the fetters gave him welts, And they named America after somebody else.

A flea and a fly

An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks.

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.

He without benefit of scruples His fun and money soon quadruples.

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