Vituperation is one of the "six Biblical Pivotals"
that Kenneth Burke identifies in the preface to his novel, Towards a Better
Life. Ah, language! Why holler or shoot bombs when you can with words translate
turbulence into delight, or again from Burke, sneers into smiles?
Elegant Insults
as sent by Jim Brown to Car Talk
"There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation
won’t cure." – Jack E. Leonard
"I wish I’d known you when you were alive." – Leonard Louis Levinson
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
– Abraham Lincoln
"His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving
over the landscape in search of an idea." – William McAdoo (about Warren
Harding)
"You’ve got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to
get rid of it." – Groucho Marx
"I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception."
– Groucho Marx
"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
"I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it." – Groucho
Marx
"Don’t be humble…you’re not that great." – Golda Meir
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
– H. H. Munro
"It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy,
proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt." – Thomas Paine (about
John Adams)
"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead." – Alexander Pope
"A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest." – Alexanger Pope
"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)
"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one." – Earl of
Rochester
"He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." – Theodore Roosevelt
"A little emasculated mass of inanity." – Theodore Roosevelt (about
Henry James)
"You’re a good example of why some animals eat their young." – Jim
Samuels
"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation, but
not the power of speech." – George Bernard Shaw
"A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone
had licked it." – George Bernard Shaw
"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we’ll get some fluid and embalm each
other." – Neil Simon
"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion." – Robert
Louis Stevenson
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
– Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He was as great as a man can be without morality." – Alexis de Tocqueville
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." – Forrest Tucker
"His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there’s scarcely a
hole in it anywhere." – Mark Twain
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
– Mark Twain
"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was
waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." – Mark Twain
"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach." – 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
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
– 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
"Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow." – Franklin K. Dane
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?" – Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts for support rather
than illumination." – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping
rabbits." – Edith Sitwell