When Insults Had Class ...

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