Quoted in The Grove: insult
If you haven’t anything nice to say about anyone, come sit by me.
~Alice Roosevelt Longfellow
If you can’t say anything nice, at least have the decency to be vague.
~Susan Andersen
The point of quotations is that one can use another’s words to be insulting.
~Carolyn Gold Heilbrun
EndQuote:
The Stones that Critics hurl with Harsh Intent
A Man may use to build his Monument.
~Arthur Guiterman
~~
Prewritten Prompt circa 08/29: tool
~~
The man who offers an insult writes it in sand, but for the man who receives it, it’s chiseled in bronze.
~Giovannino Guareschi
She knew she should let it go, but it was too late. She’d chewed the insult over, torn it apart and swallowed it. The insult was part of her now.
~Louise Penny
I don’t know why I can’t let the insults go, but I can’t. I’m the product of every hurt that’s ever been laid on me.
~Julie Anne Peters
An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
~Lord Chesterfield
Never insult anyone by accident.
~Robert A Heinlein
~
The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
~William Hazlitt
If you are capable of submitting to insult you ought to be insulted.
~Juvenal
He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be.
~Pierre Corneille
~
No two insults call for quite the same treatment, but I offer you this as a generality: The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved.
~Russell Lynes
If you take the the insults of your fellow human beings personally, you will be offended for the rest of your life.
~Deepak Chopra
He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.
~Brigham Young
Don’t argue. Never deign to deny. Meet insults with laughter.
~Leigh Bardugo
~
If someone offers you a gift, and you decline to accept it, the other person still owns that gift. The same is true of insults and verbal attacks.
~Steve Pavlina
No one can insult you without your permission.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
She’d tell me how she’d handle the backhanded compliment by smiling and pretending she was receiving a genuine compliment all the while ignoring their attempt to be insulting. After all, it’s the way an insult is received that makes it an insult. You can’t really give offense unless someone takes it.
~Portia de Rossi
You don’t take insults. You leave them with the insulter.
~Milton H Erickson
He who does not take insults seriously, is on the path to wisdom.
~Paulo Coelho
When you do not accept the insult some one casts on you, it goes back to the person who indulged in it first; a registered letter that is not accepted returns to the sender.
~Sathya Sai Baba
“You decline?” he cried, almost defiantly. “`Decline’ isn’t the word. A man doesn’t decline an insult.”
~Henry James
~ ~
Posted From The Grove
Never insult seven men when all your packing is a six-shooter.
~Zane Grey
Don’t speak unless you can improve the silence.
~Jorge Luis Borges
If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you.
~Bruce Lee
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
~Oscar Wilde
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To say ‘we’ and mean ‘I’ is one of the most recondite insults.
~Theodor Adorno
There’s no reason to trade insults. We have our way of life and they have theirs. I wouldn’t live as they do, but disrespect seems pointless. I’m sure there are good people among them.
~Alexei Panshin
~
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
~Mason Cooley
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
~Frederick Douglass
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
~Seneca the Younger
~
The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.
~Rowan Atkinson
There’s a difference between using the word to insult somebody and using it to start a journalistic conversation.
~Juan Williams
Sometimes questions can be more cruel than insults.
~Jenny Han
Normal is the cruellest of all insults
~Mike Snelle
Not expecting someone to measure up is an insult
~Marshall Sylver
~
Schellenberg had the habit of calling people he didn’t like whores, and this term suited him well – and when I think about it, it’s true that the insults people prefer, the ones that come most spontaneously to their lips, often in the end reveal their own hidden faults, since they naturally hate what they most resemble.
~Jonathan Littell
When someone attempts to insult you know that they are inadvertently giving away what would insult them.
~Donna Lynn Hope
It is not insult from another that causes you pain. It is the part of your mind that agrees with the insult.
~Alan Cohen
~
‘Honesty’ in social life is often used as a cover for rudeness. But there is quite a difference between being candid in what you’re talking about, and people voicing their insulting opinions under the name of honesty.
~Judith Martin
Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.
~Judith Martin
I’m not insulting you, I’m describing you.
~perp unknown
Just because it’s the truth doesn’t make it less insulting.
~Louise Penny
~
No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it’s the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people’s indifference is the only horror.
~Paul Bowles
I love it when someone insults me. That means that I don’t have to be nice anymore.
~Billy Idol
~~
~Insult.gr: Insult Promo (7:08) evocative images & clips
https://vimeo.com/86876376
~
~ME + U: Insult – Episode 103 (2:00) woke rules of insult
https://vimeo.com/302267625
~
~Janis Aschberger: The Correct Insult (4:48) mature or immature humor, viewpoint depending; award winning
https://vimeo.com/255529410
~
~Peter Mallahan: The Ultimate Insult (0:30) ouch
https://vimeo.com/35623834
~
~Tightline Productions: The Insult (4:32) Flyfishing, tying the Insult Fly – for the incurably curious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_vaTVksSG4
~~
I elect to stay on the soil of which I was born and on the plot of ground which I have fairly bought and honestly paid for. Don’t advise me to leave, and don’t add insult to injury by telling me it’s for my own good; of that I am to be the judge.
~Robert Purvis
Ineluctably, the insults inflicted in one war call forth new wars of retaliation, which may be waged within months of the original conflict or generations later.
~Barbara Ehrenreich
In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
~Randolph Bourne
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
~George Washington
~
The poorly sophisticated, since many of us are, as presumed to be, lacking in good arguments, we are then prone to being well-versed in insults.
~Criss Jami
I don’t feel I insult people. I try and get to the facts and I don’t feel I insult people.
~Donald Trump
I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
~William F Buckley, Jr
Half the world’s troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.
~Mary Renault
Why don’t you do the world a favour. Pull your bottom lip up over your head and swallow.
~Walter Matthau
~
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country.
~Criss Jami
~
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.
~Claude Adrien Helvetius
Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
~Daniel Pipes
We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.
~Ferdinand Mount
~
I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It’s not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.
~Terence McKenna
People having religions is an insult to the universe.
~Celia Green
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.
~Edmond de Goncourt
~~
VIDEO:
I don’t know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don’t know why.
~Mark Twain
He is simply a hole in the air.
~George Orwell
He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.
~Robert Redford
I’ve been called worse things by better people.
~Pierre Trudeau
~
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
~Oscar Wilde
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
~Benjamin Disraeli
He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up
~Paul Keating
He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
~Winston Churchill
He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebearers, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.
~James Reston, Jr
There but for the grace of God, goes God.
~Winston Churchill
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
~Winston Churchill
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
~Oscar Wilde
They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
~Thomas Reed
I’ve had a wonderful evening — but this wasn’t it.
~Groucho Marx
Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.
~Jasper Fforde
Sometimes being old is used as an insult, which is bizarre because, if you’re lucky, that’s literally going to happen to you. It’s a strange thing to gloat about: being born recently.
~Ricky Gervais
He has no enemies, but he is intensely disliked by his friends.
~Oscar Wilde
Be stingy with nothing but the name of a friend, and take care not to waste your insults.
~Paul Gauguin
~
These lies are like their father that begets them;
gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou
clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou
whoreson, obscene, grease tallow-catch,—
~William Shakespeare
‘Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried
neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O
for breath to utter what is like thee! you
tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile
standing-tuck
~William Shakespeare
…His wit’s as thick
Tewksbury mustard…
~William Shakespeare
Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
~William Shakespeare
Being unpleasant seems to be your only hobby.
~Livingston Welch
~~
~Ha Pham: Ennio Morricone in, Malena (5:16) first love’s dream, cruelty of time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-YD2Y8ojYE
~
~Maura Lacerda: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (15:06) free of insult, a booklover’s escape-fantasy, animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad3CMri3hOs
~
~Omeleto: Traction (5:00) with a twist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl93cPDVp4g
~
~Key & Peele: Insult Comic (4:44) a comic’s descent into audience hell
https://vimeo.com/261282439
~~
Transgendered Quotes: with apologies to Twain, McCarthy, Congreve, Hughes, Parker, Wilde & Shaw
Last week, I stated this wo/man was the ugliest wo/man I had ever seen. I have since been visited by hir broster, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
~Mark Twain
S/he looks like hir face caught fire and they beat it out with a rake.
~Cormac McCarthy,
O, s/he is the antidote to desire.
~William Congreve
Hir face was hir chaperone.
~Rupert Hughes
S/he runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
~Dorothy Parker
S/he…can talk brillantly upon any subject provided s/he knows nothing about it.
~Oscar Wilde
The trouble with hir is that s/he lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
~George Bernard Shaw
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.
~Margaret Thatcher
~
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.
~Dorothy Parker
If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
~Dorothy Parker
She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
~Mae West
Sometimes I think I might insult people by being openly flirtatious, then snatching it back.
~Dominique Swain
Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.
~Dorothy Parker
It looks like she went into Claire’s Boutique, fell on a sale rack and said, ‘I’ll take it!’
~Bianca Del Rio
Her dress was a shade of green only tree lizards should be sporting, and she wore more accessories than a home-shopping hostess.
~Karen Neches
Some guys like to undermine a girl’s self-esteem with little verbal jabs. Eventually it all adds up. One bee sting doesn’t hurt a horse, but enough bee stings can kill a horse.
~Oliver Gaspirtz
~
What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.
Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.”
Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.
~Jessica Valenti
~
He’d call me false and faithless and I’ve always had a weakness for those two words; next to cruel, they’re the nicest words for a woman to hear, and not so hard to earn.
~Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Mutli-tools are like insults, girls — you should always have one on hand.
~Elizabeth Little
Each of us carries within himself a collection of instant insults.
~Haim Ginott
The pedestal is immobilizing and subtly insulting whether or not some women yet realize it. We must move up from the pedestal.
~Wilma Scott Heide
~~
MUSIC:
I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… if you have one.
~George Bernard Shaw
Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.
~Winston Churchill
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book – I’ll waste no time reading it.
~Moses Hadas
~
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
~Aaron Copland
I could eat alphabet soup and $#¡+ better lyrics.
~Johnny Mercer
The scratches in [her] records are moments of relief.
~S A Sachs
We’re constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products.
~Bob Dylan
[on a young pop idol] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
~Billy Wilder
~
Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
~Winston Churchill
Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall
make your wit bankrupt.
~William Shakespeare
You have a ready wit. Tell me when it’s ready.
~Henny Youngman
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
~Jonathan Swift
~
An insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud.
~Aristophanes
He’s a man of great common sense and good taste – meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
~George Bernard Shaw
~
We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.
~Albert Einstein
The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect.
~Kresley Cole
~~
~Fleetwood Mac: Go Your Own Way, w/ Grace Grundy (2:09) released from love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3xM4gA7Kuw
~
~Nanci Griffith: Love at The Five and Dime (6:31) a gentle classic antithetical to insult … now she’s gone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK462XnRjQ
~
~Justin Bieber: Love Yourself, w/ Dua Lipa (3:26) no one else does
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOy4K2Yl4cg
~
~Victoria + Jean: Free Insult (2:44) high-energy rock
https://vimeo.com/320838741
~
~Taylor Swift: Mean (4:03) the wages of mean is anonymity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa1eI1hpDE
~~
I would agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.
~Paraprosdokian (altered somewhat)
I’ve got a good mind to go out and join a club and beat you over the head with it.
~Groucho Marx
Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
~Mark Twain
Are you in great physical pain, or is that your thinking expression?
~G A Aiken
You’re awfully small to be so hugely irritating.
~Stephenie Meyer
I have nothing but respect for you — and not much of that.
~Groucho Marx
You unfailingly omnibothersome bitch.
~Scott Lynch
Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.
~Ayn Rand
If you’re gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty.
~Marilyn Monroe
Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
~Oscar Levant
You know, you’re a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.
~Tom Baker
Is that a bulletproof vest? See, now that’s so insulting. That’s like saying I’m not smart enough to shoot you in the head.
~Eddie DeChooch/Janet Evanovich
Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn’t have given you worse advice.
~Russell Lynes
I don’t know what makes you so dumb but it really works.
~Russell Lynes
I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
~Walter Ely
So plunge that fact into your conscience and allow it to rotate for a while. Until it hurts.
~Melina Marchetta
Oh, aren’t you just the rottenest wet blanket whoever spoiled a sport.
~Catherynne M Valente
Roses are red, violets are blue, I have five fingers, the middle one is for you.
~Gena Showalter
Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.
~Groucho Marx
I can’t believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest. ~Steven Pearl
Use a condom. The world doesn’t need another you.
~Carroll Bryant
Haters are the people who will broadcast your failures and whisper your success.
~Will Smith
Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.
~Nishan Panwar
~~
~~
PERPETRATORS ANONYMOUS: the mean meme
Oh, I’m sorry. Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?
Some people should use a glue stick instead of ChapStick®.
I love how you state the obvious with such a sense of discovery.
I was today years old when I realized I didn’t like you.
How many times do I have to flush before you go away?
Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable…like a coma.
You are like the sun, not because you light up my world but because it hurts to look at you.
Please move away from the sunlight, I hate the smell of burning plastic.
Behind every fat dude there’s a good-looking guy. No seriously, you’re in the way.
I envy everyone you have never met.
Somewhere out there is a tree tirelessly producing oxygen for you. You owe it an apology.
You have the perfect face for radio.
My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re ugly too.
Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly is to the bone.
Hey, you have something on your chin. No, the 3rd one down.
I hope your day is filled with people like you.
I envy everyone you have never met.
Not saying I hate you, but I would unplug your life support to charge my phone.
~on a T-shirt
I see that you’ve set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.
Can you finish up your life story? I got an appointment at four.
You shouldn’t act hard-to-get when you’re hard-to-want.
You are not useless because you can still be used as a bad example.
Do you hear that? It’s the sound of no one caring.
If bull$#¡+ could float, you’d be Admiral of the fleet!
Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to act like one.
I’m glad to see you’re not letting your education get in the way of your ignorance.
If what you don’t know can’t hurt you, you’re invulnerable.
It’s so cute when you try to talk about things you don’t understand.
The degree of your stupidity is enough to boil water.
Your stupidity is so high I would like to kill myself, and to do that I would have to jump from your ego to your IQ.
I don’t think you are stupid. You’ve just bad luck when thinking.
If I had a dollar for every time you said something smart, I’d be broke.
Somewhere, somehow, you are robbing a village of their idiot.
I don’t have the patience or the crayons to explain this to you.
~T-shirt meme
I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m guessing it’s hard to pronounce.
I would love to insult you but I’m afraid I won’t do it as well as nature did.
You’re a gray sprinkle on a rainbow cupcake.
You are so old, when you were a kid rainbows were black and white.
I can feel my personality turning a dull shade of grey when I talk to you.
I would never date you. I’m lonely, not desperate.
You’re the reason God created the middle finger.
I’m busy right now, can I ignore you another time?
Please don’t interupt me when I’m ignoring you.
I will ignore you so hard you will start doubting your existence.
Respect your haters, they’re the only ones who think you’re better than them.
Who ate your bowl of sunshine this morning, thundercloud?
~~
Beach Burial Ground
~~
Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
~Charles Caleb Colton
Wretched are those preoccupied with insulting, belittling and discrediting others.
~Wayne Gerard Trotman
Save your skin from the corrosive acids from the mouths of toxic people. Someone who just helped you to speak evil about another person can later help another person to speak evil about you.”
~Israelmore Ayivor
If you speak insults you will hear them also.
~Plautus
~
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
~Hector Hugh Munro
I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
~Clarence Darrow
I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
~Mark Twain
I hope your wife brings a date to your funeral.
~perp unknown
~
We should have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we should not insult them and revile them knowing they cannot not defend themselves.
~John Lithgow
Only cowards insult dying majesty.
~Aesop
Even a hare, the weakest of animals, may insult a dead lion.
~Aesop
~
Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.
~Claude Adrien Helvetius
How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!
~Honore de Balzac
Envy is an insult to oneself.
~Yevgeny Yevtushenko
~
Erik choked back the insult he’d been on the verge of uttering. Judging by his expression, it was viler than a castor-oil purgative.
~Juan Filloy
Avoid the use of abusive words when communication is in session; you might scare away someone who is meant to become your mentor or your customer.
~Israelmore Ayivor
When you trash the opposition, you simultaneously demean yourself.
~Frank Luntz
A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.
~Louis Nizer
~
“You tries tuh be so much-knowin’. You got tuh learn how tuh speak when you spokin to, come when youse called.”
“Ah ain’t got tuh do but two things — stay black and die,” Sister Berry snapped.
~Zora Neale Hurston
Blacks concede that hurrawing, jibing, jiving, signifying, disrespecting, cursing, even outright insults might be acceptable under particular conditions, but aspersions cast against one’s family call for immediate attack.
~Maya Angelou
Insult me all you want. Judge me as much as you want. Say what you think, everything you want. But one thing. Don’t touch my fans.
~Michael Jackson
Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I’ll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can’t beat Yiddish.
~Linda Barnes
I usually do drive-by insults, and keep moving until I realize the next day how horrible I am.
~Andy Cohen
Racism is stupid. It’s an insult to God, arrogantly implying that God goofed-up when he chose to make us all different.
~Rick Warren
~
Yes, Adam had the incredible ability of making you feel loved while insulting you in the same sentence.
~Teodora Kostova
I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.
~Criss Jami
One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In the same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their lives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion?
~Alexandra Adornetto
~ ~
@Writers Platform
If they had said my writing wasn’t good enough, fair enough, that’s an opinion. But to say it’s too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.
~Tanith Lee
When people complain of your complexity, they fail to remember that they made fun of your simplicity.
~Michael Bassey Johnson
~
A sharp tongue does not mean you have a keen mind.
~perp unknown
The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.
~perp unknown
Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I’ve told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.
~Janet Fitch
~
Don’t call my lyrics poetry. It’s an insult to real poets.
~Bernie Taupin
We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone.
~Oscar Wilde
He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn’t really mind — or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a novel, a story, a poem that he loved, something visceral and volcanic occurred within him. He wasn’t sure what this might mean — except perhaps that he had got life and art mixed up, back to front, upside down.
~Julian Barnes
The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.
~Toni Morrison
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
~
Books are like sapphires; they must be polished – polished! or else you insult your readers.
~Margaret Deland
~
The Bloodbath:
Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville.
~D H Lawrence
I am reading Henry James…and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.
~Virginia Woolf
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
~William Faulkner
Mr. Kipling stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.
~Dylan Thomas
No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
~Lord Byron
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary. (on Ernest Hemingway)
~William Faulkner
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
~Noël Coward
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.
~Oscar Wilde
The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since being shot by Booth was to have fallen into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
~Edmund Wilson
A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not. (on Ezra Pound)
~Gertrude Stein
Kerouac lacks discipline, intelligence, honesty and a sense of the novel. His rhythms are erratic, his sense of character is nil, and he is as pretentious as a rich whore, sentimental as a lollypop.
~Norman Mailer
~
Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
~Mark Twain
I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
~Mark Twain
A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.
(on Mark Twain)
~William Faulkner
~
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.
~Rose Macaulay
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
~Dorothy Parker
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. ~English professor
It’s like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. (on Tom Wolfe)
~John Irving
~
I have read the […] scribblings, which I consigned to the fire where they belong — and where they for once cast a little light, which they certainly would not have done otherwise.
~Margaret Atwood
Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
(on Lillian Hellman)
~Mary McCarthy
To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.
~Ruth Rendell
~
Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.
~Gore Vidal
That’s not writing, that’s typing
~Truman Capote
~
An idiot child screaming in a hospital. (on George Bernard Shaw)
~H G Wells
What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.
~Gustave Flaubert
~
The ignorant Insults of Individuals will not hinder me from doing my duty to my Art
~William Blake
I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
~Mark Twain
~
I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.
~Evelyn Waugh
Do you suppose that it is within your power to insult me? You evidently are not aware to whom you are speaking? Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?
~Marcel Proust
I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
Never insult a writer. You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate.
~Garrison Keillor
~~
Prewritten Prompt: insult
~~
[Francesca] ‘You really are a few biscuits short of breakfast.’
His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
‘You’re a few colors shy of a rainbow?’ she offered. ‘Not pulling a full wagon? Knitting with only one needle? All foam and no beer? Your cheese slid off the cracker? You couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel?’
[Nicodemus] ‘All right. I get it.’
~Blake Charlton
When a ham actor told George Jessel “I’m a sensation at the Roxy. Last night I had the audience glued to their seats,” Jessel snapped, “Wonderful! How clever of you to think of it.”
~Bennett Cerf
“Nigel Berbrooke?’ He practically choked on the name.
‘Yes, why?’
‘The man has more hair than wit. A great deal more.’
‘But he’s going bald,’ she couldn’t resist pointing out.
He grimaced, ‘And if that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what will.”
~Julia Quinn
A member of Parliament to Disraeli: ‘Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.’ That depends, Sir,’ said Disraeli, ‘whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.’
~Benjamin Disraeli
After a few minutes there was a click on the line and a voice said in Farsi,”Goh Benares roo gahbret.”
This roughly translated as: “May shit rain down upon your grave.”
“Goozidam too chesmet,” Tom replied.
“I fart in your eye.”
~Mark Mills
He didn’t think it possible to sign sewage-sucking-excuse-of-a-baseborn-bilge-rat but somehow Gurn managed.
~Grace Draven
“Firstly, stop talking as if you did anything but what I wanted. Secondly — well, you’re a slippery bastard, granted. You’ve made plenty of mistakes and done a lot of bad things and told an incredible number of lies. You’re an utter shit. Sorry, what was I saying? I got carried away.
~K J Charles
He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, “You are an untidy person.”
~Jim Butcher
~~
The Exercise
In Lieu of Law
There are no laws with moral claims
Enforced by courts with metal chains
Keep mortals clean from immortal stains
There’s no police like mental pain
Regrets repent where insults reign
~
Negligent
The insult of ignoring you
and making you cry
The insult of not listening
not asking you why
Blue lipstick on my mirror
pic of you and a guy
Only chance of a lifetime
why didn’t I try
Heartless cause of a heartbreak
now he has your eye
Perfect insult of indifference
no word of goodbye
~
curtailing curtains
bilge water for oceans
junkyards for playgrounds
marketing poisonous potions
rampant infections abound
peddling hot toxic samples
cornering the Edens of Earth
desecrate sylvan green temples
trashed for cash, all its worth
toilet paper the forests
vulnerable flammable lands
species die out in torrents
testing what life will stand
greedily degrading the planet
gratuitously insulting the host
whether to preserve it or end it
verdict pending, what matters most
~
Here with the latest…
From the pinnacle of mediocrity
Insulting the lives of celebrity
In range of scandal’s proximity
Peacocks preen exhibiting vanity
Gasbag news, scent with alacrity
A judge with 10-second authority
Self-proclaimed voice of veracity
Stamped approval of authenticity
Self-massaged ids of superiority
~
5s & 7s
greying shades gather
crowds of clouds curbing the light
dare insult the sun
billowing pillowy clouds
feathered edges halo bright
~
arrogant insult
ancient scripts bruted scriptures
claim the will of God
a people chosen of men
push to the front of the line
~
reproach and disgrace
naked insult of mirrors
won’t lie to my face
~
summer-fried season
landscape challenge, then insult
green gone brown then black
~
tongue-lashing insult
savory tang of revenge
bitter aftertaste
~
paid insults, short ads
like leaf cutting ants clip time
shorn bits of our lives
~ ~
You couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
~Edward Flaherty
SLANDER is like a hornet. If you don’t kill it dead the first crack, you’d better not strike at it at all.
~Josh Billings
~
Insult is powerful. Insult begets both rage and humor and often at the same time.
~Suzanne Fields
Insults are the business of the court.
~Naguib Mahfouz
~
In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.
~Criss Jami
Sometimes, very occasionally, you do your best boxing with your mouth.
~Bryce Courtenay
~
These kind of hair-breadth missings of happiness look like the insults of fortune.
~Henry Fielding
The worst insult I can inflict on life is that I do not reflect on its meaning.
~Kedar Joshi
~
I have never understood why an intoxicated man feels the climax of insult is to hurl at you your name. Perhaps because he knows it is the one charge you cannot deny. But invariably before you escape, as though assured the words will cover your retreat with shame, he throws at you your full title.
~Richard Harding Davis
There are few persons to whom truth is not a sort of insult.
~Joseph Alexandre Pierre de Segur, Viscount of Segur
~
To insult a friend implies that you respect his masculinity enough to know he can take it without acting like a crybaby. The swapping of insults, like the fighting between brothers, becomes the seal of the male bonding.
~Frank Pittman
The English love an insult. It’s their only test of a man’s sincerity.
~Benjamin Franklin
~
Why, if you only knew the secrets to which I’m privy!
My dear Lifeblesser, please trust me when I say the I have no desire to know any secrets which involve you and a privy.
~Brandon Sanderson
~
Lady Astor: Winston, if I were your wife I’d put poison in your coffee.
Winston Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband I’d drink it.
A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk,’ to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.
~Winston Churchill
In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn’t?
~Sebastian Junger
~
If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you.
~Bill Russell
The pair of opposites do not effect a yogi – neither praise nor insult.
~Harbhajan Singh Yogi
~
Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.
~Jean-Paul Sartre
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
~Cesare Pavese
~
To insult someone we call him “bestial.” For deliberate cruelty and nature, “human” might be the greater insult.
~Isaac Asimov
Talking with the mouth of a beast won’t ease your pain.
~Andrew Davidson
~
A dog is not almost-human, and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.
~John Holmes
Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.
~Elizabeth Taylor
~ ~
Quotes harvested from:
https://azquotes.com, https://bqotd.com, https://goodmorningshayari.in, https://goodreads.com, https://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com, https://liveabout.com, https://pun.me, https://quotegarden.com, https://quoteno.com, https://thegoalchaser.com, https://thoughtcatalog.com, https://top-funny-jokes.com, https://wisesayings.com
~
Video Harvest: https://vimeo.com, https://youtube.com
~. .~
[…] ~Real McCoy: One More Time (4:01) danceablehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EbRikt1bJo […]