The lighter side of linguistics There really was a time when insults had class. “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) “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time in reading it.” – Moses Hadas “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 “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’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 “He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” – Jack E. Leonard “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” – James Reston (about Richard Nixon) “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…” – Oscar Wilde “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts… for support rather than illumination. ” – Andrew Lang “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://angryaussie.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/when-insults-had-class/
Hehe funny stuff Sam Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Im not sure this one is an insult though, sounds more like a compliment to me: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"You're depriving a village somewhere of its idiot" -unknown "Your gene pool is in dire need of some chlorine additive" -me
I prefer the earlier version I heard in elementary school, Nietzchefan: "May the spiders of the desert hold their annual parade in your undershorts." While looking for one of my favorite insults, I came across this nugget in a TimesOnline article: The very earliest recorded insult, as far as I can ascertain, was painted some 4,300 years ago on the walls of the tomb of Ti in Saqqara, Egypt. It depicts one fisherman saying to another: “Come here, you copulator”, or hieroglyphs to that effect. It is not Oscar Wilde, admittedly, but it was start. There is an apocryphal exchange between Disraeli and Gladstone--attributed in the comments to the above-cited article to two lesser politicians, that is perhaps my favorite insult in history (and the one I was looking for): "Your end will either come from the gallows, or of venereal disease." "That, my dear sir, depends on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress."