The Little Book of Insults

by Rosanna Kelly

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction

256 pages, hardback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two hundred pages of Ulysses... never have I read such tosh. As for the first two chapters we will let them pass, but the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th - merely the scratching of pimples on the body of the bootboy at Claridges.

- Virginia Woolf

Gibbon's style is detestable, but it is not the worst thing about him.

- Coleridge

Monsieur Zola is determined to show us that if he has not genius he can at least be dull.

- Oscar Wilde

To see him fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevrès vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

- Evelyn Waugh on Stephen Spender

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, but not to soar.

- Macaulay on Dryden

You know I can't stand Shakespeare's plays, but yours are even worse.

- Tolstoy to Chekhov

If Goethe is a god, I am sure I'd rather go to the other place.

- Thackeray

[melissa ☀️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i can’t really rate this like a normal book bcuz it was deadass just a huge list of insults from before 1998 but it was fun to find in the retirement home and see how humour hasn’t/has changed in some ways through the years