Insults

"You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner."    (Aristophanes)

"Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty."    (Lillian Hellman)

"Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write."    (A. E. Housman)

"His ignorance is encyclopedic."    (Abba Eban)

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."    (Abraham Lincoln)

"Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."    (Al Capp)

"So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name."    (Alan Bennett)

"Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache."    (Alan Bennett)

"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead."    (Alexander Pope)

"A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits."    (Alexander Pope)

"She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers."    (Alexander Woollcott)

"He was as great as a man can be without morality."    (Alexis de Tocqueville)

"He used statistics the way a drunkard uses lampposts - for support, not illumination."    (Andrew Lang)

"He's liked, but he's not well liked."    (Arthur Miller)

"We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault."    (Ashleigh Brilliant)

"Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence."    (Ashleigh Brilliant)

"I will always love the false image I had of you."    (Ashleigh Brilliant)

"I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?"    (Ashleigh Brilliant)

"He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating."    (Ayn Rand)

"I've had them both, and I don't think much of either."    (Beatrix Lehmann (watching a wedding.))

"He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea and that was wrong."    (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Little things affect little minds."    (Benjamin Disraeli)

"A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity."    (Benjamin Disraeli)

"There goes the famous good time that was had by all."    (Bette Davis)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."    (Billy Wilder)

"She not only kept her lovely figure, she's added so much to it."    (Bob Fosse)

"She's the sort of woman who lives for others -- you can tell the others by their hunted expression."    (C. S. Lewis)

"He'd make a lovely corpse."    (Charles Dickens)

"He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use" them.    (Charles Kingsley)

"His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with."    (Charles Lamb)

"If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?"    (Charles Pierce)

"She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again."    (Charles Talleyrand)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."    (Charles, Count Talleyrand)

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."    (Clarence Darrow)

"Please try not to be such a wiener-head."    (Dave Barry)

"I never liked him and I always will."    (Dave Clark)

"Differently clued."    (Dave Clark)

"Has the mathematical abilities of a Clydesdale."    (David Letterman)

"When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?"    (David Letterman)

"You look into his eyes, and you get the feeling someone else is driving."    (David Letterman)

"He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul."    (David Lloyd George)

"He is brilliant - to the top of his boots."    (David Lloyd George)

"Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep."    (Dennis Healy)

"He was about as useful in a crisis as a sheep."    (Dorothy Eden)

"He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin."    (Dorothy L. Sayers)

"That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them."    (Dorothy Parker)

"If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn't be surprised."    (Dorothy Parker)

"This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force."    (Dorothy Parker)

"That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."    (Douglas Adams)

"Is that a beard, or are you eating a muskrat?"    (Dr. Gonzo)

"A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a rooster."    (Earl Long)

"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one."    (Earl of Rochester)

"He's so snobbish he has an unlisted zip-code."    (Earl Wilson)

"He hasn't an enemy in the world - but all his friends hate him."    (Eddie Cantor)

"At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was his date."    (Edith Massey in "Polyester")

"A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits."    (Edith Sitwell)

"Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses."    (Elizabeth Taylor)

"In her single person she managed to produce the effect of a majority."    (Ellen Glascow)

"He knows so little and knows it so fluently."    (Ellen Glasgow)

"She looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - or anywhere else."    (Elsa Lanchester)

"He is so mean, he won't let his little baby have more than one measle at a time."    (Eugene Field)

"I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland."    (Eugene McCarthy)

"His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it."    (F. H. Bradley)

"Sharp as a sack full of wet mice."    (Foghorn Leghorn)

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."    (Forrest Tucker)

"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me."    (Fred Allen)

"He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes."    (Fred Allen)

"He's so small, he's a waste of skin."    (Fred Allen)

"Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look ridiculous year after year."    (Fred Allen)

"What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement."    (Fred Allen)

"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted."    (Fred Allen)

"Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same time."    (Frederic Raphael)

"Did you eat a brain tumor for breakfast?"    (from "Heathers")

"What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody cares about? You!"    (from "Murphy Brown")

"Yeah, she's beautiful, but you can't find her IQ with a flashlight."    (from "The Greatest American Hero")

"End of season sale at the cerebral department."    (Gareth Blackstock)

"An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to."    (Gene Fowler)

"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech."    (George Bernard Shaw)

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."    (George Bernard Shaw)

"He had a winning smile, but everything else was a loser."    (George C. Scott)

"She is a water bug on the surface of life."    (Gloria Steinem)

"You're a parasite for sore eyes."    (Gregory Ratoff)

"Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?"    (Groucho Marx)

"Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."    (Groucho Marx)

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."    (Groucho Marx)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."    (Groucho Marx)

"I married your mother because I wanted children, imagine my disappointment when you came along."    (Groucho Marx)

"Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honor; which is probably more than she ever did."    (Groucho Marx)

"Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you."    (Groucho Marx)

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."    (Groucho Marx)

"Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!"    (Groucho Marx)

"Time wounds all heels."    (Groucho Marx)

"Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."    (Groucho Marx)

"You know I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters?"    (Groucho Marx)

"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"    (Groucho Marx)

"Do you think I could buy back my introduction to you?"    (Groucho Marx)

"Don't point that beard at me, it might go off."    (Groucho Marx)

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."    (Groucho Marx)

"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."    (Groucho Marx)

"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."    (Groucho Marx)

"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it."    (Groucho Marx)

"I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up."    (Groucho Marx)

"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury."    (Groucho Marx)

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."    (Groucho Marx )

"She's descended from a long line her mother listened to."    (Gypsy Rose Lee)

"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."    (H. H. Munro)

"He strains his conversation through a cigar."    (Hamilton Mabie)

"She proceeds to dip her little fountain-pen filler into pots of oily venom and to squirt the mixture at all her friends."    (Harold Nicholson)

"Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog."    (Harold Wilson)

"You had to stand in line to hate him."    (Hedda Hopper)

"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid."    (Heinrich Heine)

"She resembles the Venus de Milo: she is very old, has no teeth, and has white spots on her yellow skin."    (Heinrich Heine)

"The chief excitement in a woman's life is spotting women who are fatter than she is."    (Helen Rowland)

"He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease."    (Henry James)

"Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles."    (Henry VanDyke)

"He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him."    (Herbert Beerbohm Tree)

"His mind is so open that the wind whistles through it."    (Heywood Braun)

"They don't hardly make 'em like him any more - but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway."    (Hunter S. Thompson)

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."    (Irvin S. Cobb)

"You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation."    (Irvin S. Cobb)

"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork."    (Irving Brecher)

"Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life."    (Ivy Compton-Burnett)

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."    (Jack E. Leonard)

"Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles."    (Jack London)

"She should get a divorce and settle down."    (Jack Paar)

"Modesty is the artifice of actors, similar to passion in call girls."    (Jackie Gleason)

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinter legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to see it done at all."    (James Boswell)

"She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered."    (James Matthew Barrie)

"While he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter either."    (James Thurber)

"She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation."    (Jean Webster)

"It's like cuddling with a Butterball turkey."    (Jeff Foxworthy)

"Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his friends for his life."    (Jeremy Thorpe)

"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young."    (Jim Samuels)

"She's so pure, Moses couldn't even part her knees."    (Joan Rivers)

"You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin."    (Joe Orton)

"Stay with me; I want to be alone."    (Joey Adams)

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."    (John Bright)

"She's got such a narrow mind, when she walks fast her earrings bang together."    (John Cantu)

"A blank, helpless sort of face, rather like a rose just before you drench it with DDT."    (John Carey)

"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all of the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake."    (John D. Rockefeller)

"Well, I think we ought to let him hang there.  Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind."    (John Ehrlichman)

"He was trying to save both his faces."    (John Gunther)

"His face was filled with broken commandments."    (John Masefield)

"His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin."    (John Philpot Curran)

"His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with gall; his tongue drips poison."    (John Quincy Adams)

"He is a man of splendid abilities but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight."    (John Randolph)

"He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold."    (John Ruskin)

"He is so stupid you can't trust him with an idea."    (John Steinbeck)

"Once a woman has given you her heart you can never get rid of the rest of her body."    (John Vanbrugh)

"He's so fat, he can be his own running mate."    (Johnny Carson)

"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them."    (Jonathan Swift)

"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork."    (Jonathan Swift)

"He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it."    (Joseph Heller)

"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity" thrust upon them.    (Joseph Heller "Catch-22")

"The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind."    (Joseph Stilwell)

"Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair."    (Josh Billing)

"When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel sorry - for the clothes."    (Josh Billings)

"A dork is a dork is a dork."    (Judy Markey)

"He was a bit like a corkscrew. Twisted, cold and sharp."    (Kate Cruise O'Brien)

"Outside every thin girl is a fat man, trying to get in."    (Katharine Whitehorn)

"Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee later than others."    (Kin Hubbard)

"I thought men like that shot themselves."    (King George V)

"He is mad, bad and dangerous to know."    (Lady Caroline Lamb)

"He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style."    (Leo Tolstoy)

"He is a fine friend. He stabs you in the front."    (Leonard Louis Levinson)

"I wish I'd known you when you were alive."    (Leonard Louis Levinson)

"What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank."    (Liberace)

"Teflon brain (nothing sticks.)"    (Lily Tomlin)

"The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character."    (Lyndon Johnson)

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."    (Mae West)

"The finest woman that ever walked the streets."    (Mae West)

"She's the kind of woman who climbed the ladder of success - wrong by wrong."    (Mae West)

"He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces."    (Mae West)

"He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went in for a career of its own."    (Margaret Halsey)

"Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible."    (Margaret Mead)

"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake."    (Margot Asquith)

"He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head."    (Margot Asquith)

"He could never see a belt without hitting below it."    (Margot Asquith)

"She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig."    (Margot Asquith)

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."    (Mark Twain)

"I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."    (Mark Twain)

"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."    (Mark Twain)

"Be careful when reading health books; you may die of a misprint."    (Mark Twain)

"He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity."    (Mark Twain)

"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach."    (Mark Twain)

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"    (Mark Twain)

"He is useless on top of the ground; he aught to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."    (Mark Twain)

"His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere."    (Mark Twain)

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."    (Mark Twain)

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."    (Mark Twain)

"Useless as a pulled tooth."    (Mary Roberts Rinehart)

"Behind every great man, there is a surprised woman."    (Maryon Pearson)

"She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when it happens."    (Michael Arlen)

"Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?"    (Milton Berle)

"He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money."    (Moliere)

"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes."    (Molly Ivins)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."    (Moses Hadas)

"This is one of those big, fat paperbacks, intended to while away a monsoon or two, which, if thrown with a good over arm action, will bring a water buffalo to its knees."    (Nancy Banks-Smith (review of M. M. Kaye's "The Far Pavilions"))

"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other."    (Neil Simon)

"He's completely unspoiled by failure."    (Noel Coward)

"She had much in common with Hitler, only no mustache."    (Noel Coward)

"I see her as one great stampede of lips directed at the nearest derriere."    (Noël Coward)

"You have a good and kind soul. It just doesn't match the rest of you."    (Norm Papernick)

"He makes a very handsome corpse and becomes his coffin prodigiously."    (Oliver Goldsmith)

"A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's. She changes it more often."    (Oliver Herford)

"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."    (Oscar Levant)

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."    (Oscar Wilde)

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."    (Oscar Wilde)

"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone."    (Oscar Wilde)

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."    (Oscar Wilde)

"I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot."    (Oscar Wilde)

"She is a peacock in everything but beauty."    (Oscar Wilde)

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."    (Oscar Wilde)

"He was either a man of about a hundred and fifty who was rather young for his years, or a man of about a hundred and ten who had been aged by trouble."    (P. G. Wodehouse)

"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum."    (P. G. Wodehouse)

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."    (Paul Keating)

"Her only flair is in her nostrils."    (Pauline Kael)

"He made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds."    (Percival Wilde)

"A woman will lie about anything, just to stay in practice."    (Phillip Marlowe)

"He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."    (Raymond Chandler)

"She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts."    (Raymond Chandler)

"No more sense of direction than a bunch of firecrackers."    (Rob Wagner)

"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion."    (Robert Louis Stevenson)

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."    (Robert Redford)

"She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people."    (Robertson Davies)

"His golf bag does not contain a full set of irons."    (Robin Williams)

"A woman is just a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."    (Rudyard Kipling)

"Women's intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking."    (Rupert Hughes)

"Her skin was white as leprosy."    (S. T. Coleridge)

"He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright."    (Samuel Butler)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."    (Samuel Johnson)

"She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand."    (Saul Bellow)

"He is as good as his word - and his word is no good."    (Seamus MacManus)

"If there's anything disgusting about the movie business, it's the whoredom of my peers."    (Sean Penn)

"He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged."    (Simone Signoret)

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."    (Spiro T. Agnew (about the press, 1970))

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."    (Stephen Bishop)

"I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest."    (Steven Pearl)

"He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop."    (Sydney Smith)

"She never was really charming till she died."    (Terence)

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."    (Thomas Brackett Reed)

"A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post."    (Tom Waits)

"Next-day delivery in a nanosecond world."    (Van Jacobson)

"He was happily married - but his wife wasn't."    (Victor Borge)

"God was bored by him."    (Victor Hugo)

"Women are like elephants to me: nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to own one."    (W. C. Fields)

"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast."    (W. S. Gilbert)

"She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious."    (W. Somerset Maugham)

"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit."    (W. Somerset Maugham)

"He had delusions of adequacy."    (Walter Kerr)

"She's been on more laps than a napkin."    (Walter Winchell)

"She was so ugly she could make a mule back away from an oat bin."    (Will Rogers)

"Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week."    (William Dean Howells)

"He was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met."    (William Faulkner)

"The perfection of rottenness."    (William James)

"The greatest thing since they reinvented unsliced bread."    (William Keegan)

"If he ever had a bright idea it would be beginner's luck."    (William Lashner "Veritas")

"He makes a July's day short as December."    (William Shakespeare)

"The tautness of his face sours ripe grapes."    (William Shakespeare)

"You're a mouse studying to be a rat."    (Wilson Mizner)

"He's the only man I ever knew who had rubber pockets so he could steal soup."    (Wilson Mizner)

"Failure has gone to his head."    (Wilson Mizner)

"He's a trellis for varicose veins."    (Wilson Mizner)

"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."    (Winston Churchill)

"There but for the grace of God, goes God."    (Winston Churchill)

"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'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse."    (Woody Allen)

"Her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak."    (Woody Allen)