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 NashRead
Basketball, a game which won't be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo.
Interpretation
This quote humorously critiques the nature of basketball by suggesting its absurdity if played with giraffes.
Ogden Nash uses humor and satire to highlight the inherent absurdity of basketball as a sport. By jokingly suggesting that the game would be more suitable if baskets were set at an impossible height and giraffes were involved, he invites the reader to reflect on the sometimes ridiculous aspects of sports culture and the arbitrary standards we accept in competitive games.
In practice
During a light-hearted sports discussion at a party.
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.
I'm like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I'm only forty-nine.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
Here's a good rule of thumb; 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.
Here's a toast to the roast that good fellowship lends, with the sparkle of beer and wine; May its sentiment always be deeper, my friends, than the foam at the top of the stein. Then here's to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
I was in NYC during 9/11; it happened on a Tuesday, I was on stage Thursday. It was a small crowd, but it took about 10 days and comedy clubs were packed.
Of all bores, the worst is the sparkling bore.
I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'
Cheap cigars come in handy; they stifle the odor of cheap politicians.
I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
I don't feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there's something that I really did do. I believe I'm just ordinary. And I'd like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.
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