User:JackofOz/Favourite Insults

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See also my list of quotes and anti-quotes


This is an ever-expanding collection of my Favourite Insults.

Oscar Wilde: A gentleman never insults anyone unintentionally


Lord Birkenhead is very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head
  • Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man, and should only be listened to by a deaf man
  • Even Beethoven thumped the tub. The Ninth Symphony was composed by a sort of Mr. Gladstone of music (having 2 bites at the cherry)
  • Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away
of John Cage - He was refreshing but not very bright. His freshness came from an absence of knowledge
If Louisa May Alcott had really been sound, she'd have written a trilogy, and called the last "Divorced Lesbian Sluts"
It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four
Unaccompanied Bach is for me one of the severest hardships of the calling of musical critic. It is probably good, even jolly to play, but to have to listen to it is worse than breaking stones
Carlyle was so poisonous, it's a wonder his mind didn't infect his bloodstream
  • of Clement Attlee - He is a modest little man, with much to be modest about
  • A sheep in sheep's clothing (Attlee again)
of Cecil Beaton - Malice in Wonderland
The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains
Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States
of W. E. Gladstone - A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity
What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write!
of Norman Tebbit - It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat
on first seeing his future wife, Caroline of Brunswick - Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy
  • Dear Ingrid (Bergman) - speaks five languages and can't act in any of them
That's Kingsley Amis, and there's no known cure
of Greta Garbo - A great actress? Oh, undoubtedly, one wearily assents, but what dull, pompous films they make for her, hardly movies at all so retarded are they by her haggard equine renunciations, the slow consummation of her noble adulteries!
of the 17th Earl of Derby - A very weak-minded fellow, I am afraid, and, like a feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who sat on him!
When so few Australian novelists can write prose at all, it is a great pity to see Mr White, who shows on every page some touch of the born writer, deliberately choose as his medium this pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge
I wish my sons taught early an utter contempt for novels and light reading (from his will, in which he made provision for his sons' education)
Zola descends into the sewer to bathe in it, I to cleanse it
Dr Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding
of Henry David Thoreau - He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial - he was parochial
of James Callaghan - There is nobody in politics I can remember and no case I can think of in history where a man combined such a powerful political personality with so little intelligence
of Sir Josiah Symon - He is a gruesome ghoul, with lips reeking of mendacity and foetid with malice
of Leonard Bernstein - He uses music as an accompaniment to his conducting
of Socrates - 'The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him
I have gone all through Brahms pretty well by now. All I can say of him is that he's a puny little dwarf with a rather narrow chest. Good Lord, if a breath from the lungs of Richard Wagner whistled about his ears, he would scarcely be able to keep his feet
Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind
  • George John Nathan:
of J. M. Barrie - The triumph of sugar over diabetes
The wonderful thing about Sydney is you can rise to the top without any class or taste
The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W. H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling
of Hillary Rodham Clinton - A raisin-eyed, carrot-nosed, twig-armed straw-stuffed mannequin trundled in on a go-cart by the mentally bereft powerbrokers of the state Democratic Party
of John Adams - It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt
Chesterton is like a vile scum on a pond ... all his slop ...
of Rebecca West - The rich stuffing of her digressions almost kills the flavour of the bird itself
letter to a reviewer - I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me
of Tony Benn - He has had more conversions on the road to Damascus than a Syrian long distance lorry driver
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery, always applying first principles to trifles
  • Brahms is just like Tennyson, an extraordinary musician, with the brains of a third rate village policeman
  • Chesterton's resolute conviviality is about as genial as an auto-da-fe of teetotallers
of W. H. Auden - He is the dirtiest man I have ever liked
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves
of Sir Frederick Ashton - For one of the most creative, lazy and mean-spirited people one has ever met, he thrives on adulation. His curtain-calls are now a complete act in themselves
  • I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius. Why, in comparison with him, Raff is a giant, not to speak of Rubinstein, who is after all a live and important human being, while Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried-up stuff" (diary, 9 October 1886).
  • of Richard Strauss - Such an astounding lack of talent was never before united to such pretentiousness (from an 1888 letter)
of Sir Richard Jebb - What little time he can spare from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties
to Anton Chekhov - You know I can't stand Shakespeare's plays, but yours are even worse
I don't get into politics. I just depicted one animal on another (when asked about his equestrian statue of Tsar Alexander III of Russia [1] (with thanks to User:Clio the Muse)
  • Of course, I believe in the Devil. How otherwise would I account for the existence of Lord Beaverbrook?
  • A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph (Churchill) that was not malignant and remove it (after Churchill's lung had been removed but proved to be benign)
of Henry James - It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den
France is a country where the money falls apart in your hands and you can't tear the toilet paper
of Benjamin Britten - There is no reason ... why innocence should not be a valid theme for music; but to dwell on it for thirty years argues a certain arrested development
of Tony Benn - He immatures with age
One single cymbal clash by Bruckner is worth all the four symphonies of Brahms with the serenades thrown in
The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all
  • Unknown:
said to Capability Brown - I hope I may die before you, so that I may see Heaven before you improve it