"Happiness is having a scratch for every itch"
About this Quote
Happiness, in Ogden Nash's hands, is instantly demoted from a mountain peak to a bodily twitch. "Having a scratch for every itch" is funny because it refuses the grand, aspirational vocabulary we usually drag into the subject. Nash takes the most metaphysical word in the sentence and answers it with the most unglamorous solution: not enlightenment, not meaning, just relief. The wit is surgical: happiness becomes a matter of access, timing, and minor competence. Do you have the tool? Can you reach the spot? Is the irritation finally quiet?
The subtext is more cynical than it first appears. An itch is desire, restlessness, the nagging sense that something is off. A scratch is gratification, an intervention that feels decisive but is also fleeting. Nash hints that we are creatures built to keep itching; satisfaction is episodic, almost mechanical, and the best we can hope for is being adequately equipped to manage our own discomforts. It's an American, mid-century kind of wisdom: pragmatic, anti-heroic, suspicious of lofty promises, acutely aware of the body's petty tyranny.
Context matters here: Nash made a career out of light verse that smuggled sharp social observation past the reader's defenses. In a culture selling happiness as a permanent lifestyle upgrade, he frames it as maintenance: less a destination than an ongoing negotiation with irritation. The line lands because it’s small enough to be true. It also stings because it implies the opposite: misery is being surrounded by itches you can't reach, can't name, or can't afford to fix.
The subtext is more cynical than it first appears. An itch is desire, restlessness, the nagging sense that something is off. A scratch is gratification, an intervention that feels decisive but is also fleeting. Nash hints that we are creatures built to keep itching; satisfaction is episodic, almost mechanical, and the best we can hope for is being adequately equipped to manage our own discomforts. It's an American, mid-century kind of wisdom: pragmatic, anti-heroic, suspicious of lofty promises, acutely aware of the body's petty tyranny.
Context matters here: Nash made a career out of light verse that smuggled sharp social observation past the reader's defenses. In a culture selling happiness as a permanent lifestyle upgrade, he frames it as maintenance: less a destination than an ongoing negotiation with irritation. The line lands because it’s small enough to be true. It also stings because it implies the opposite: misery is being surrounded by itches you can't reach, can't name, or can't afford to fix.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Ogden Nash — "Happiness is having a scratch for every itch." (listed on Wikiquote) |
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