Quote of the Day (Ogden Nash, on Procrastination)

“How drear, on a planet with plenty of woes,

That sloth is not slumber or torpor repose;

That the innocent joy of not getting things done

Simmers sulkily down to plain not having fun.

You smile in the morn like a bride in her bridalness

At the thought of a day of nothing but idleness.

By midday you’re slipping, by evening a lunatic,

A perusing-the-newspapers-all-afternoonatic,

Worn to a wraith from the half-hourly jaunt

After glasses of water you didn’t want,

And at last when onto your pallet you creep,

You discover yourself too tired to sleep.”—American poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971), from “Procrastination is All of the Time,” originally published in The New Yorker in 1939, reprinted in Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from “The New Yorker,” edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (2001)