Elegant Ammunition

Here's a list of insults to impress your enemies even as you needle them!

"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." -Louis Nizer

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." -Stephen Bishop

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -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)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." -Moses Hadas

"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open." -Howard Hughes (about Clark Gable)

"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 had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -Jack E. Leonard

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." -Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -Charles, Count Talleyrand

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on?" -Mark Twain

"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." -Mark Twain

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West

"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." -Oscar Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde

"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 (1844-1912)