Famous Insults

1) "We've been through so much together, and most of it was your

fault."
Ashleigh Brilliant

2) "Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?"
Groucho Marx

3) "Well, I think we ought to let him hang there. Let him twist
slowly, slowly in the wind."
John Ehrlichman

4) "What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the
bank."
Liberace

5) "Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human

beings?"
Milton Berle

6) "You're a parasite for sore eyes."

Gregory Ratoff

7) "Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week."

William Dean Howells

8) "Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."

Groucho Marx

9) "Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence."

Ashleigh Brilliant "The higher a monkey climbs, the more you
see of its behind."
Joseph Stilwell

10)"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as

members."
Groucho Marx

11)"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."

Jack E. Leonard

12)"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks
at the stork."
Irving Brecher

13)"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

Groucho Marx

14)"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young."

Jim Samuels
15)"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
Irvin S. Cobb

16)"If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?"
Charles Pierce

17)"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog,

it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx (so it's not an insult, I still liked it)

18)"In her single person she managed to produce the effect of a

majority."
Ellen Glascow

19)"I've had them both, and I don't think much of either."

Beatrix Lehmann (watching a wedding.)

20)"Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life."

Ivy Compton-Burnett

21)"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it."
Mark Twain

22)"I married your mother because I wanted children; imagine my

disappointment when you came along."
Groucho Marx

23)"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you
here."
Stephen Bishop

24)"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with
great pleasure."
Clarence Darrow

25)"I never liked him and I always will."

Dave Clark

26)"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who
annoy me."
Fred Allen

27)"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion."

Robert Louis Stevenson

28)"I thought men like that shot themselves."

King George V
29)"Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honor; which is
probably more than she ever did."
Groucho Marx

30)"He hasn't an enemy in the world - but all his friends hate him."
Eddie Cantor

31)"He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel

food."
Raymond Chandler

32)"He's completely unspoiled by failure."

Noel Coward

33)"He's liked, but he's not well liked."

Arthur Miller

34)"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
Mae West

35)"I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the
quickest."
Steven Pearl

36)"I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no
other provisions in sight."
Mark Twain

37)"Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I
think it's you."
Groucho Marx

38)"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."

Oscar Levant

39)"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."
Winston Churchill

40)"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them."

Jonathan Swift

41)"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I

was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
Groucho Marx

42)"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and
embalm each other."
Neil Simon

43)"You had to stand in line to hate him."

Hedda Hopper
44)"You have a good and kind soul. It just doesn't match the rest of
you."
Norm Papernick

45)"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your
hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."
Mark Twain

46)"You're a mouse studying to be a rat."

Wilson Mizner

47)"Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she

reminds me more of you than you do!"
Groucho Marx

48)"You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the
grave in a Y-shaped coffin."
Joe Orton

49)"Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at
the same time."
Frederic Raphael

50)"The perfection of rottenness."

William James

51)"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation
but not the power of speech."
George Bernard Shaw

52)"There but for the grace of God, goes God."

Winston Churchill

53)"There goes the famous good time that was had by all."
Bette Davis

54)"Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten

principles."
Jack London

55)"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they

go."
Oscar Wilde

56)Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.""

Tobias George Smolett

57)"Be careful when reading health books; you may die of a

misprint."
Mark Twain
58)"Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee later
than others."
Kin Hubbard

59)"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity,

and some men have mediocrity" thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller "Catch-22"

60)"That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of
them."
Dorothy Parker

61)"The finest woman that ever walked the streets."

Mae West

62)"The greatest thing since they reinvented unsliced bread."

William Keegan

63)"Time wounds all heels."

Groucho Marx

64)"She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers."

Alexander Woollcott

65)"She's been on more laps than a napkin."

Walter Winchell

66)"She's got such a narrow mind, when she walks fast her earrings
bang together."
John Cantu

67)"She's so pure; Moses couldn't even part her knees."

Joan Rivers

68)"She's the kind of woman who climbed the ladder of success -

wrong by wrong."
Mae West

69)"She's the sort of woman who lives for others -- you can tell the
others by their hunted expression."
C. S. Lewis

70)"So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name."

Alan Bennett

71)"She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation."
Jean Webster
72)"She never was really charming till she died."
Terence

73)"She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when
it happens."
Michael Arlen

74)"You know I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters?"
Groucho Marx

75)"She proceeds to dip her little fountain-pen filler into pots of oily
venom and to squirt the mixture at all her friends."
Harold Nicholson

76)"She should get a divorce and settle down."

Jack Paar

77)"She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you
with nothing but peanuts and filberts."
Raymond Chandler

78)"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

Oscar Wilde

79)"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is

only stupid."
Heinrich Heine

80)She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.
Ada Leverson

81)"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

Groucho Marx

82)"She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by

much the same class of people."
Robertson Davies

83)"She is such a good friend that she would throw all her
acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out
again."
Charles Talleyrand

84)"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake."

Margot Asquith

85)"He's so snobbish he has an unlisted zip-code."

Earl Wilson

86)"He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces."

Mae West
87)"He's the only man I ever knew who had rubber pockets so he
could steal soup."
Wilson Mizner

88)"He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head."

Margot Asquith

89)"I will always love the false image I had of you."

Ashleigh Brilliant

90)"Do you think I could buy back my introduction to you?"

Groucho Marx

91)"I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophilia, but that would be

beating a dead horse."
Woody Allen

92)"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
Charles, Count Talleyrand

93)"He was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met."

William Faulkner

94)"He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except
the gift of the power to use" them.
Charles Kingsley

95)"He was so crooked; you could have used his spine for a safety-
pin."
Dorothy L. Sayers

96)"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with

both eyes."
Molly Ivins

97)"He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind

him in both eyes." Fred Allen

98)"He was trying to save both his faces."

John Gunther

99)"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram
on his tombstone."
Oscar Wilde

100)"A dork is a dork is a dork."

Judy Markey

101)"Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Dennis Healy
102)"Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he
looks at you like a whipped dog."
Harold Wilson

103)"Failure has gone to his head."

Wilson Mizner

104)"God was bored by him."

Victor Hugo

105)"Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his friends for
his life."
Jeremy Thorpe

106)"He could never see a belt without hitting below it."

Margot Asquith

107)"He had delusions of adequacy."

Walter Kerr

108)"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill

109)"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

Oscar Wilde

110)"He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his
soul."
David Lloyd George

111)"He is a fine friend. He stabs you in the front."

Leonard Louis Levinson

112)"He is a man of splendid abilities but utterly corrupt. He shines

and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight."
John Randolph

113)"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

John Bright

114)"He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him."

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

115)"He is as good as his word - and his word is no good."

Seamus MacManus

116)"He is mad, bad and dangerous to know."

Lady Caroline Lamb
117)"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in
others."
Samuel Johnson

118)"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved

by death."
H. H. Munro

119)"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

Paul Keating

120)"He is so mean; he won't let his little baby have more than one
measle at a time."
Eugene Field

121)"He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own
grease."
Henry James

122)"He made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds."

Percival Wilde

123)"He makes a July's day short as December."

William Shakespeare

124)"He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much

money."
Moliere

125)"He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged."

Simone Signoret

126)"He was a bit like a corkscrew. Twisted, cold and sharp."

Kate Cruise O'Brien

127)"He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who

looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity."
Mark Twain

128)"He was about as useful in a crisis as a sheep."

Dorothy Eden

129)"He was as great as a man can be without morality."

Alexis de Tocqueville

130)"He was happily married - but his wife wasn't."

Victor Borge

131)"A blank, helpless sort of face, rather like a rose just before you
drench it with DDT."
John Carey
132)"A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a
rooster."
Earl Long

133)"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."

Winston Churchill

134)"At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was

his date."
Edith Massey in "Polyester"

135)"Don't point that beard at me, it might go off."

Groucho Marx

136)"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach."

Mark Twain

137)"He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost

fascinating."
Ayn Rand

138)"He had a winning smile, but everything else was a loser."

George C. Scott

139)"He makes a very handsome corpse and becomes his coffin

prodigiously."
Oliver Goldsmith

140)"He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went
in for a career of its own."
Margaret Halsey

141)"He strains his conversation through a cigar."

Hamilton Mabie

142)"He was either a man of about a hundred and fifty who was
rather young for his years, or a man of about a hundred and ten
who had been aged by trouble."
P. G. Wodehouse

143)"He's a trellis for varicose veins."

Wilson Mizner

144)"He's so fat; he can be his own running mate."

Johnny Carson

145)"He's so small; he's a waste of skin."

Fred Allen
146)"He'd make a lovely corpse."
Charles Dickens

147)"Her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac

arrest in a yak."
Woody Allen

148)"Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look
ridiculous year after year."
Fred Allen

149)"Her only flair is in her nostrils."

Pauline Kael

150)"Her skin was white as leprosy."

S. T. Coleridge

151)"His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with
gall; his tongue drips poison."
John Quincy Adams

152)"His face was filled with broken commandments."

John Masefield

153)"His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin."

John Philpot Curran

154)"His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented
with."
Charles Lamb

155)"I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot."

Oscar Wilde

156)"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."
Groucho Marx

157)"I see her as one great stampede of lips directed at the nearest
derriere."
Noël Coward

158)"Is that a beard, or are you eating a muskrat?"

Dr. Gonzo

159)"It's like cuddling with a Butterball turkey."

Jeff Foxworthy

160)"Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed

mustache."
Alan Bennett
161)"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."
Groucho Marx

162)"She had much in common with Hitler, only no mustache."

Noel Coward

163)"She is a peacock in everything but beauty."

Oscar Wilde

164)"She looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - or

anywhere else."
Elsa Lanchester
165)"She not only kept her lovely figure, she's added so much to it."
Bob Fosse

166)"She resembles the Venus de Milo: she is very old, has no teeth,
and has white spots on her yellow skin."
Heinrich Heine

167)"She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled
pig."
Margot Asquith

168)"She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as

upholstered."
James Matthew Barrie

169)"She was so ugly she could make a mule back away from an oat
bin."
Will Rogers

170)"She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her

own hand."
Saul Bellow

171)"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a

pitchfork."
Jonathan Swift

172)"The tautness of his face sours ripe grapes."

William Shakespeare

173)"When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly

clothed, I feel sorry - for the clothes."
Josh Billings

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

address on it?"
Mark Twain
175)"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum."
P. G. Wodehouse

176)"Yeah, she's beautiful, but you can't find her IQ with a

flashlight."
From "The Greatest American Hero"

177)"You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an

operation."
Irvin S. Cobb

178)"A woman is just a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."

Rudyard Kipling

179)"A woman will lie about anything, just to stay in practice."

Phillip Marlowe

180)"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinter legs.

It is not done well; but you are surprised to see it done at all."
James Boswell

181)"A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's. She changes it more

often."
Oliver Herford

182)"Once a woman has given you her heart you can never get rid of
the rest of her body."
John Vanbrugh

183)"The chief excitement in a woman's life is spotting women who

are fatter than she is."
Helen Rowland

184)"Women are like elephants to me: nice to look at, but I wouldn't
want to own one."
W. C. Fields

185)"Women's intuition is the result of millions of years of not

thinking."
Rupert Hughes

186)"Behind every great man, there is a surprised woman."

Maryon Pearson

187)"Outside every thin girl is a fat man, trying to get in."

Katharine Whitehorn

188)"Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses."

Elizabeth Taylor
189)"Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to
become as mediocre as possible."
Margaret Mead

190)"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead."

Alexander Pope

191)"A mental midget with the IQ of a fence post."

Tom Waits

192)"A wit with dunces and a dunce with wits."

Alexander Pope

193)"Did you eat a brain tumor for breakfast?"

from "Heathers"

194)"Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair."

Josh Billing

195)"End of season sale at the cerebral department."

Gareth Blackstock

196)"Has the mathematical abilities of a Clydesdale."

David Letterman

197)"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any
man I know."
Abraham Lincoln

198)"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."

Robert Redford

199)"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

Billy Wilder

200)"He is brilliant - to the top of his boots."

David Lloyd George

201)"He is so stupid you can't trust him with an idea."

John Steinbeck

202)"He is useless on top of the ground; he aught to be under it,

inspiring the cabbages."
Mark Twain

203)"He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it."

Joseph Heller

204)"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points

clearly to a political career."
George Bernard Shaw
205)"He knows so little and knows it so fluently."
Ellen Glasgow

206)"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

Forrest Tucker

207)"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that
fool you. He really is an idiot."
Groucho Marx

208)"He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens

to be in style."
Leo Tolstoy

209)"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one."
Earl of Rochester

210)"He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop."
Sydney Smith

211)"He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold."

John Ruskin

212)"He used statistics the way a drunkard uses lampposts - for

support, not illumination."
Andrew Lang

213)"He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright."

Samuel Butler

214)"He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea
and that was wrong."
Benjamin Disraeli

215)"His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's

scarcely a hole in it anywhere."
Mark Twain

216)"His ignorance is encyclopedic."

Abba Eban

217)"His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through

it."
F. H. Bradley

218)"His mind is so open that the wind whistles through it."

Heywood Braun

219)"I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?"

Ashleigh Brilliant
220)"I wish I'd known you when you were alive."
Leonard Louis Levinson

221)"If he ever had a bright idea it would be beginner's luck."

William Lashner "Veritas"

222)"Little things affect little minds."

Benjamin Disraeli

223)"No more sense of direction than a bunch of firecrackers."

Rob Wagner

224)"Sharp as a sack full of wet mice."

Foghorn Leghorn

225)"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable

substitute for wit."
W. Somerset Maugham

226)"She is a water bug on the surface of life."

Gloria Steinem

227)"She's descended from a long line her mother listened to."

Gypsy Rose Lee

228)"Stay with me; I want to be alone."

Joey Adams

229)"Teflon brain (nothing sticks.)"

Lily Tomlin

230)"That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent

organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to
be able to avoid meeting."
Douglas Adams

231)"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the

sum of human knowledge."
Thomas Brackett Reed

232)"Useless as a pulled tooth."

Mary Roberts Rinehart

233)"What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody

cares about? You!"
from "Murphy Brown"

234)"What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement."

Fred Allen
235)"When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?"
David Letterman

236)"While he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter

either."
James Thurber

237)"You look into his eyes, and you get the feeling someone else is
driving."
David Letterman

238)"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was

glad to get rid of it."
Groucho Marx

239)"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings

unintentionally."
Oscar Wilde

240)"A great many people now reading and writing would be better
employed keeping rabbits."
Edith Sitwell

241)"A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of

his own verbosity."
Benjamin Disraeli

242)"Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the

unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
Al Capp

243)"An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have

someone to look up to."
Gene Fowler

244)"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School
Board."
Mark Twain

245)"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be

drawn and quoted."
Fred Allen

246)"I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions
- the curtain was up."
Groucho Marx

247)"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man

who devotes all of the hours of the waking day to the making of
money for money's sake."
John D. Rockefeller
248)"If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid
end to end, I wouldn't be surprised."
Dorothy Parker

A. E. Housman
249)"Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a
member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
Mark Twain

250)"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no

time reading it."
Moses Hadas

251)"This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should

be hurled with great force."
Dorothy Parker

252)"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury."

Groucho Marx