COLLEXION OF TASTY INSULTS

1 Joe Gould 2 Samuel Johnson 3 Winston Churchill
4 Alexander Pope 5 Oscar Wilde

You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy, and I am
Yours,
B. Franklin

|Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, end of his letter to William Strahan|

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From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter.
Someday I intend reading it.

|Groucho Marx, b. 1895|

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May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you
so far over the hills of Damnation that
the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope.

|Irish curse|

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Here lies Aretino, Tuscan poet
Who spoke evil of everyone but God,
Giving the excuse, "I never knew Him."

|Anonymous|

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Marriage makes an end of many short follies --
being one long stupidity.

|Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900|

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Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry "We will not be dictated to,"
and promptly became stenographers.

|G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936|

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Take from him his sophism, futilities and incomprehensibilities and what remains?
His foggy mind.

|Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, on Plato|

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A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.

|Samuel Johnson, 1704-1789|

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I like Wagner's music better than any other music.
It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says.

|Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900|

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Wagner, thank the fates, is no hypocrite.
He says right out what he means, and usually he means something nasty.

|James G. Huneker, 1860-1921|

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Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

|Mark Twain, 1835-1910|

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Is Wagner a human being at all?
Is he not rather a disease?

|Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900|

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There are few moments during her recital when one can relax and feel confident that she will make her goal, which is the end of the song.

|Paul Hume, 1950, on Margaret Truman|

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I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

|Jascha Heifetz, b. 1901|

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Epstein is a great sculptor. I wish he would wash,
but I believe Michaelangelo never did, so I suppose it is part of the tradition.

|Ezra Pound, 1885-1972|

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There's a wonderful family called Stein,
There's Gert and there's Epp and there's Ein;
Gert's poems are bunk,
Epp's statues are junk,
And no one can understand Ein.

|Anonymous, at the author Gertrude Stein, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, and the scientist Albert Einstein|

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With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott,
whom I despise so enterely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.
The intensity of my impatience with him occasionally reaches such a pitch, that it would
positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him, knowing as I do
how incapable he and his worshippers are of understanding any less obvious form of indignity.

|G.B. Shaw, 1856-1950|

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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me.
I am sick of both.

|Samuel Johnson, to his biographer James Boswell|

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No one minds what Jeffrey says.
It's not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the Equator.

|Reverend Sidney Smith, 1771-1845|

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I have to believe in the Apostolic Succesion.
There is no other way of explaining the descent
of the Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot.

|Rev. Sidney Smith|

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I have no relish for the country. It is a kind of healthy grave.

|Rev. Sidney Smith|

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Macaulay is like a book in breeches....
he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

|Rev. Sidney Smith, on Thomas Babington Macaulay|

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Such an active lass. She loves nature in spite of what it did to her.

|Bette Midler,
on Princess Anne of England|

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If he sends a telegram, he gets writer's cramp.

|Patrice Wymore, on Errol Flynn's 'intellectual capacity'|

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He was so mean, it hurt him to go to the bathroom.

|Britt Ekland, on how thrifty
Rod Stewart was|

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Dear dead Victoria
Rotted cosily;
In exelcis gloria,
And R.I.P.

|Dorothy Parker, 1893-1967|

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Life is too short
to learn German.

|Richard Porson, 1759-1805|

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Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

|P.G. Wodehouse, 1881-1975|

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Our language sunk under him.

|Joseph Addison, 1672-1719,
on the poet John Milton|

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The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is this:
he goes on without knowing how he is to get off.

|Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784,
on Oliver Goldsmith|

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He made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

|Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881,
on William Gladstone|

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(He's) a modest little man with much to be modest about.

|Winston Churchill, 1874-1965,
on Clement Attlee|

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Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

|Groucho Marx, 1890-1977|

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He looks like the guy in a science fiction movie who is the first to see the Creature.

|David Frye, on
President Gerald Ford|

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The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.

|Clifton Fadiman, b. 1904|

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If only he'd wash his neck, I'd wring it.

|John Sparrow|

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The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

|Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900|

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A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

|Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946, on the poet Ezra Pound|

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Sir Stafford has a brilliant mind -- until it is made up.

|Lady Violet Bonham Carter, 1887-1969, on Stafford Cripps|

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The scenery was beautiful but the actors got in front of it.

|Alexander Woollcott,
1887-1943, reviewing a play|

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You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.

|Oliver Wendell Holmes,
1841-1935|

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George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.

|Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900|

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Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.

|Oscar Wilde|

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If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her convicts, she doesn't deserve to have any.

|Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900,
while handcuffed and rained at
on his way to prison|

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The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him.

|Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800-1859, on Socrates|