Ogden Nash Quotes

Some people build fences to keep people out; some people build fences to keep people in.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.

You build a wall to keep something unwanted out … or to hold something precious in.

I've been so used to thinking of what the borders are keeping out that I haven't considered that they're also penning us in.

I feel like I've been shut in a closet, and he's on the other side, and he doesn't have the key to unlock the door.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?

I'll have to keep looking for more of them, more brief moments of freedom in a world that refuses to allow it.

Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.

You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me, first by myself.

Is it not insupportable to be held down to a canter when you long to gallop for miles?

No women no kids - that's the rules.

You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Be aware that rigidity imprisons.

A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.

To define is to limit.

All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.

There are worse prisons than words.

I think the silence would be good with me, and not interacting with people would be okay. But not being able to move outside of the space would be hard. Not being able to walk around - the stillness of my body, physically - that would be the challenge.

Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?