What Did You Say?

There are insults and the there are insults. I would love to have the quick mind it would take to come up with a really stinging and clever one. Most of the time I only think about a cutting retort long after the conversation. I guess I could memorize some from the list below. I think they would come in handy.

When Insults Had Class

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

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

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to
the dictionary." -- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
-- Groucho Marx

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

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
-- Oscar Wilde

"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...followed by

Churchill's response: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will
attend second, if there is one." -- Winston Churchill

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

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -- John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."

-- Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
-- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
-- Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address
on it?" -- Mark Twain

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

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." --
Oscar Wilde

Lady Astor once remarked to Winston Churchill at a Dinner Party,
"Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee!"

Winston replied, "Madam if I were your husband I would drink it!".