Ogden Nash

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.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

Middle age is when you have met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else and usually is.

If called by a panther Don't anther.

Senescence begins And middle age ends The day your descendants Outnumber your friends.

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

In the world of mulesThere are no rules.

The Bronx? No Thonx!

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

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.

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__ be a banshee__r can she?

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__ cooperating now.At first she didn__ understandThat milk production must be planned;She didn__ understand at firstShe either had to plan or burst,But now the government reportsShe__ 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__e given,The less you lead, the more you__e 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__ got it before I wake.

I am tarred and feathered with Time.

Were it not for frustration and humiliationI suppose the human race would get ideas above its station.

...I would not engage the wombatIn any form of mortal combat.

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.

Parsley is gharsley.

Very Like a WhaleOne thing that literature would be greatly the better forWould be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but haveto go out of their way to say that it is like something else.What foes it mean when we are toldThat the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experienceTo know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lotof Assyrians.However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolfon the fold?In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy thereare a great many things,But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purpleand gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big redmouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,at the very most,Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he hadto invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolatethem,With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiersto people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lotof wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,from Homer to Tennyson;They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanketafter a winter storm.Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanketof snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoeticalblanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly,What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.