These insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words. Insults then, had some class!
1. "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, I will attend the second...If there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response.
2. 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."
3. "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
4. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
- Clarence Darrow
5. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
6."Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas
7. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
- Mark Twain
8. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.."
- Oscar Wilde
9. "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."
- Stephen Bishop
10."He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
- John Bright
11. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb
12. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson
13. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
- Paul Keating
14. "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
- Charles, Count Talleyrand
15. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
- Forrest Tucker
16. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain
17. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- Mae West
18. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde
19. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... For support rather than illumination."
- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
20. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
- Billy Wilder
21. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx.
22."He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill