Anyone who knows me at all knows I love a quick wit! These insults are from an era before our language got boiled down to 4-letter words.
"He has delusions of adequacy."
- Walter Kerr
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
- Clarence Darrow
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
'Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?'
- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
- Mark Twain
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
- Oscar Wilde
"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." - - Winston Churchill, in response.
"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."
- Stephen Bishop
"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
- John Bright
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb
"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
- Paul Keating
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
- Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.."
- Forrest Tucker
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- Mae West
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."
- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx
'There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure.'
- Jack E. Leonard
'They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.'
- Thomas Brackett Reed
'He has Van Gogh's ear for music.'
- Billy Wilder
'He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.'
- Abraham Lincoln
'A modest little person, with much to be modest about. '
- Winston Churchill
And my personal favorite: "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I would put arsenic in your tea!” Lady Nancy Astor
"Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it." Winston Churchill
