Literary Insults
"A graceful taunt is worth a
thousand insults." -Louis Nizer
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." -Stephen
Bishop
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston
Churchill
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -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
"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open." -Howard Hughes
(about Clark Gable)
"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
"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -Jack E. Leonard
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
-Abraham Lincoln
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -Groucho Marx
"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -Robert Redford
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge." -Thomas Brackett Reed
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent
hard work, he overcame them." -James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -Charles,
Count Talleyrand
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" -Mark
Twain
"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting
for a vacancy in the Trinity." -Mark
Twain
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
-Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West
"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." -Oscar Wilde
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." -Oscar Wilde
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -Billy Wilder
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than
illumination." -Andrew Lang