Classic Insult Quotes

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
― Mark Twain

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
― Oscar Wilde (attributed to)

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.”
― Groucho Marx

“A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.”
― Winston Churchill

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]”
― Winston S. Churchill, Wealth, War, and Wisdom

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― George Bernard Shaw

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
― Oscar Wilde

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
― Mae West

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
― Mark Twain

“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
― Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life

“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.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.”
― Moses Hadas

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
― Billy Wilder

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.”
― Andrew Lang

“An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, "If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea." Churchill's response, "Ma'am if you were my wife I would drink it.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
― Stephen Bishop

“If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
― Dorothy Parker

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
― Forrest Tucker

“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.”
― Samuel Foote, The Life of Johnson, Vol 4

“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
― Paul Keating

“To speak much is one thing; to speak to the point another!”
― Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

“CASSIO: Dost thou hear, my honest friend?
CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend, I hear you.
CASSIO: Prithee, keep up thy quillets.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.
OTHELLO: Oh, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,
That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born!
DESDEMONA: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
OTHELLO: Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,
Made to write “whore” upon?”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables [...] our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle [...] more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave with you.”
― William Shakespeare, Coriolanus