Glorious Insults as an Art Form - Quotations

GLORIOUS INSULTS

These glorious insults use words from an era prior to the English language becoming what it has become today :

• "He had 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


• 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."


• "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).


• "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 Talleyran


• "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West


• "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


• "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)


• "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder


• "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But I'm afraid this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx