Motherhood Quote by Ogden Nash

Nash hangs his moral code on a slapstick dare: may my tongue be smothered in prune juice if I ever stoop to belittling dogs and mothers. The line works because it’s both an oath and a joke about oaths. Instead of thunderbolts or damnation, the penalty is domestic, mildly disgusting, and unmistakably Nash: bodily inconvenience as ethical enforcement. Prune juice is a comic stand-in for old age, crankiness, and the punitive rituals of “being good for you.” He makes virtue feel like something practiced in kitchens and living rooms, not preached from pulpits.

The rhymed pairing of “dogs and mothers” is the real tell. It’s absurd on the surface, but culturally precise: two categories almost everyone is expected to handle with baseline tenderness. Dogs are uncomplicated recipients of affection; mothers are the socially protected symbol of sacrifice. By bundling them, Nash sketches a map of what polite society deems un-punchable. The subtext is that cruelty often disguises itself as sophistication, the breezy put-down masquerading as humor. Nash fights that impulse using humor that’s deliberately harmless.

Contextually, Nash’s mid-century light verse thrived in magazines and suburban American life, where wit was welcome as long as it didn’t curdle into meanness. This couplet is a miniature manifesto: be funny, yes; but don’t make being funny a license to kick the nearest soft targets.