Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash (19 August 1902 – 19 May 1971) American poet

Sourced

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
- "Reflections On Ice Breaking", Hard Lines (1931); this statement is often misattributed to Dorothy Parker).

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.
- Verses From 1929 On (1961); published in England as Collected Verse from 1929 On. These lines are derived from those of the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer.

Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. . . So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.
- Commencement address at his daughter Linell's boarding school, as quoted in The Washington Post (8 May 2005)

Selected lines from the full poem

When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it.
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it.

These are enlightened days in which you can get hot water and cold water out of the same spigot,
And everybody has something about which they are proud to be broad-minded but they also have other things about which you would be wasting your breath if you tried to convince them that they were a bigot.

And I have no desire to get ugly,
But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

Naturally I am not pointing a finger at me,
But I must admit that I find Mr. Ickes or any other
speaker far more convincing when I agree with
him than when I disagree.

One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it . . . Never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.

The turtle trapped 'twixt plated decks
Doth practically conceal its sex
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.