Glorious insults from an era when four letter words were not used in public!
The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:
"If you were my husband I'd give you poison."
"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."
Disraeli: "That depends, Sir, 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
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without an 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 (1844-1912)
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening
but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
