Quotable Insults and Comebacks

A slander is like a hornet; if you can't kill it dead the first time, better not strike at it. ~Henry Wheeler Shaw


The only gracious 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. ~J. Russel Lynes


I've had a wonderful evening - but this wasn't it. ~Groucho Marx


Coolidge was known for his terse speech and reticence. A woman bet her friend that she could get Coolidge to speak to her, which was something he was reluctant to do. She went up to him and said: "Hello, Mr. President, I bet my friend that I could get you to say three words to me." "You lose," Coolidge replied dryly, and walked away. ~Author Unknown


Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. ~Mark Twain


Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. ~Oscar Wilde


She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when." ~P.G. Wodehouse


Nancy Astor: "If you were my husband, Winston, I should flavour your coffee with poison."
Winston Churchill: "If I were your husband, madam, I should drink it."


I can't believe that out of 10,000 sperm, you were the quickest. ~Steven Pearl


Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat - at least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales. ~Mark Twain


Some people are like Slinkies... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs. ~Author Unknown


Her face was her chaperone. ~Rupert Hughes


I hope they notice the mistletoe tied to my coattails as I leave town. ~Abe Lemons


She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. ~Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation


It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead. ~Rose Macaulay


Dustin Farnum: "I've never been better! In the last act yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats."
Oliver Herford: "How clever of you to think of it."


O, she is the antidote to desire. ~William Congreve, Love for Love, 1695


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, Ohio University


She has the answer to everything and the solution to nothing. ~Oscar Levant


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


I wouldn't be surprised if one day Carl's halo slipped and choked him. ~Allan Wells, referring to Carl Lewis, 1989


I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics. ~Johnny Mercer, on a British musical


I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws. ~Charles Baudelaire


The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard. ~David Gerrold