INSULTS GLORIOUS INSULTS

Insults from an era before the English language got boiled down to four letter words...

-The exchange between Churchill and Lady Astor: 

She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." 

He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
 

-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 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
 

-"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 Talleyrand
 

-"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
 

-"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork" 

- Mae West
 

-"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
 

-"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." 

- Billy Wilder
 

-"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn't it." 

- Groucho Marx.
 

- Evelyn Waugh on Randolph Churchill who was recovering from having a non-malignant tumour removed surgically: 

"What a marvel is modern medicine that it could find the only part of him that wasn't malignant and remove it."