Some Things I Wish I Had Said

My mother, and probably yours too said to us: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Sometimes when I read my favorite blogs, I enjoy the witty comments and posts. Other times I am distressed by sarcasm and arrogance. As Christians we try to discern when it is ok to use sarcasm and when it is probably not the best idea. Some words should be taken back, and some words cause great laughter (best not to be drinking coffee in front of the computer at these times). I decided to post some classic insults, some very funny, most somewhat mean, and all very witty.

"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)

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

"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 to Shaw, in response

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
-- John Bright

He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
-- Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."
-- Walter Kerr

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
-- Oscar Wilde

A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- - - Winston Churchill

Differently clued.
- - - Dave Clark

Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair.
- - - Josh Billing

End of season sale at the cerebral department.
- - - Gareth Blackstock

Has the mathematical abilities of a Clydesdale.
- - - David Letterman

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

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

He is brilliant - to the top of his boots.
- - - David Lloyd George

He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
- - - Joseph Heller

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
- - - George Bernard Shaw

He knows so little and knows it so fluently.
- - - Ellen Glasgow

He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.
- - - Forrest Tucker

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
- - - Leo Tolstoy

He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one.
- - - Earl of Rochester

He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop.
- - - Sydney Smith

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
- - - John Ruskin

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea and that was wrong.
- - - Benjamin Disraeli

His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere.
- - - Mark Twain

His ignorance is encyclopedic.
- - - Abba Eban

I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?
- - - Ashleigh Brilliant

I wish I'd known you when you were alive.
- - - Leonard Louis Levinson

If he ever had a bright idea it would be beginner's luck.
- - - William Lashner "Veritas"

Sharp as a sack full of wet mice.
- - - Foghorn Leghorn

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
- - - W. Somerset Maugham

That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
- - - Douglas Adams

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

What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement.
- - - Fred Allen

While he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter either.
- - - James Thurber

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
- - - Oscar Wilde

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
- - - Edith Sitwell

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
- - - Benjamin Disraeli

Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
- - - Al Capp

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
- - - Mark Twain

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- - - Fred Allen

I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
- - - Groucho Marx

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.
- - - Spiro T. Agnew (about the press, 1970)

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
- - - A. E. Housman

Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
- - - Mark Twain

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

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
- - - Lyndon Johnson

This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force.
- - - Dorothy Parker

This is one of those big, fat paperbacks, intended to while away a monsoon or two, which, if thrown with a good overarm action, will bring a water buffalo to its knees.
- - - Nancy Banks-Smith (review of M.M. Kaye's "The Far Pavillions")

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
- - - Aristophanes

Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep.
- - - Dennis Healy

Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog.
- - - Harold Wilson

Failure has gone to his head.
- - - Wilson Mizner

He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul.
- - - David Lloyd George

He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him.
- - - Herbert Beerbohm Tree

He is as good as his word - and his word is no good.
- - - Seamus MacManus

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
- - - H. H. Munro

He is so mean, he won't let his little baby have more than one measle at a time.
- - - Eugene Field

He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.
- - - Henry James

He made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds.
- - - Percival Wilde

He makes a July's day short as December.
- - - William Shakespeare

He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged.
- - - Simone Signoret

He was a bit like a corkscrew. Twisted, cold and sharp.
- - - Kate Cruise O'Brien

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

He was about as useful in a crisis as a sheep.
- - - Dorothy Eden

He was as great as a man can be without morality.
- - - Alexis de Tocqueville

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
- - - Charles Kingsley

He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin.
- - - Dorothy L. Sayers

He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
- - - Molly Ivins

He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes.
- - - Fred Allen

He was trying to save both his faces.
- - - John Gunther

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
- - - Oscar Wilde

He's so snobbish he has an unlisted zip-code.
- - - Earl Wilson

He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.
- - - Margot Asquith

I will always love the false image I had of you.
- - - Ashleigh Brilliant

Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.
- - - Heinrich Heine

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.
- - - Ada Leverson

She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again.
- - - Charles Talleyrand

She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
- - - Margot Asquith

She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.
- - - Jean Webster

She never was really charming till she died.
- - - Terence

She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when it happens.
- - - Michael Arlen

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
- - - W. Somerset Maugham

She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.
- - - Raymond Chandler

She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers.
- - - Alexander Woollcott

She's got such a narrow mind, when she walks fast her earrings bang together.
- - - John Cantu

She's the sort of woman who lives for others -- you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
- - - C. S. Lewis

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.
- - - Alan Bennett

Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
- - - Tobias George Smolett

The greatest thing since they reinvented unsliced bread.
- - - William Keegan

The triumph of sugar over diabetes.
- - - George Jean Nathan

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
- - - George Bernard Shaw

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.
- - - Mark Twain

You're a mouse studying to be a rat.
- - - Wilson Mizner

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

As entertaining as watching a potato bake.
- - - Marc Savlov (about the movie, Taxi)

Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
- - - Groucho Marx

Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
- - - Oscar Levant

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- - - Winston Churchill

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
- - - Jonathan Swift

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
- - - Groucho Marx

He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
- - - Raymond Chandler

He's liked, but he's not well liked.
- - - Arthur Miller

Here's where we we get out the thesaurus and look up synonyms for "garbage."
- - - Mike LaSalle (about the movie, Shanghai Knights)

I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest.
- - - Steven Pearl

I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.
- - - Mark Twain


I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
- - - Fred Allen

I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion.
- - - Robert Louis Stevenson

She's good, being gone.
- - - William Shakespeare

Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
- - - William Dean Howells

You have delighted us long enough.
- - - Jane Austen

You're a good example of why some animals eat their young.
- - - Jim Samuels

You're a parasite for sore eyes.
- - - Gregory Ratoff