When Insults Had Class

[Darren]

"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

"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

"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 had delusions of adequacy."
-- Walter Kerr

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

"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

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

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any
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

[Burgs]

To me Churchill will always be the King in this field, his ability to pull out the one liner, more often than not off his chops, leaves the written ones for dead!
Personal fav is the "...I'll be sober in the morning" one, you got that one there Boss?

[Happy]

sums up a lot of people on here hahahah

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a
reader to the dictionary."

[Flamethrower]

"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly." -- Winston Churchill

Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee."
Winston: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it."

[James]

To me Churchill will always be the King in this field, his ability to pull out the one liner, more often than not off his chops, leaves the written ones for dead!
Personal fav is the "...I'll be sober in the morning" one, you got that one there Boss?

One-liners aside though, he was an evil bastard. It's funny the way you go through school and being young and naive you think that England, and Churchill by association, was always good and right because a) Australia was an English colony and we speak the same language b) they always seemed to win. But he did a fair few pretty horrible things to non-Britons.

[mudskipper]

Oscar Wilde leaves Winston Churchill looking like a schoolboy...
Below a few quotes from the Irish master of biting wit...

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.”

“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”

“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”

“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.”

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution”



and lastly one suitable for this thread….

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”