I got these and they're too good not to share--I'm waiting for the chance to use them on my friends and enemies.
When Insults had class!
These glorious insults are from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.
1) The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, 'If you were my husband I'd give you poison,' and he said, 'If you were my wife, I'd drink it.'
2) A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.' 'That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I
embrace your policies or your mistress.'
3) 'He had delusions of adequacy.' - Walter Kerr
4) 'He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.' - Winston Churchill
5) 'A modest little person, with much to be modest about.' - Winston Churchill
6) 'I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.'- Clarence Darrow
7) '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)
9) 'Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.' - Moses Hadas
10) 'He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.' - Abraham Lincoln
11) 'I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.' - Mark Twain
12) 'He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.' - Oscar Wilde
13) '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
14) 'Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one.' - Winston Churchill, in response.
15) 'I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here.' - Stephen Bishop
16) 'He is a self-made man and worships his creator.' - John Bright
17) 'I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.' - Irvin S. Cobb
18) 'He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.' - Samuel Johnson
19) 'He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.' - Paul Keating
20) 'There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure.' Jack E. Leonard
21) 'He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.' - Robert Redford
22) 'They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.' - Thomas Brackett Reed
23) 'In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.' - Charles, Count Talleyrand
24) 'He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.' - Forrest Tucker
25) 'Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?' - Mark Twain
26) 'His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.' - Mae West
27) 'Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.' - Oscar Wilde
28) 'He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.' - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
29) 'He has Van Gogh's ear for music.' - Billy Wilder
30) 'I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.' - Groucho Marx
