Literary put downs

[Colleen Thomas]

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

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
- Winston Churchill

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

"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)

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

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

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

"They never open their mouths without subtracting
from the sum of human knowledge."
- Thomas Brackett Reed

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
- Forrest Tucker

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of 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

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

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
- Billy Wilder


My favorite is Ambrose Bierce's review of a book for the San Fran Paper he was working for.

The main problem with this book is that there is too much distance between the covers.


Anyone else have any gret one liners from famous folks?

-Colly

 

[snooper]

Not from the famous (well not very famous)

"Why he's the kind of man who would ride without gloves"
- Henry Brown (UK Equestrian Olympian many years ago).

and from someone even less famous:

A: "I want it minuted that that salesman is a w*nk*r!"

B: "No he's not."

A: "Why are you defending him?"

B: "I'm not defending him. It's just that I think he lacks the necessary technical expertise."

 

[SnoopDog]

Lol. This is really hillarious. I definitely have to remember some of those.

Snoopy

 

[Guest]

When President de Gaulle demanded that American troops be removed from French soil, Lyndon Johnson asked whether that included those who were buried beneath it. - Irwin Setzler, The Times.

If the Italians come in on our side, they'll get into trouble and we'll have to send ten divisions to save them. If they attack us, we'll have to send ten divisions to hold them off. Either way, ten divisions. - Anonymous English officer during WWI.

Lou

 

[Weird Harold]

I've seen this attributed to Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and Groucho Marx, but I really doubt any of them actually said it.

"I may be drunk, Madam, but you are ugly and I shall be sober in the morning."

 

[minsue]

Mark Twain - Of a novel by Henry James: Once you put it down, you can't pick it up.

Charles de Montesquieu - An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Dr. Samuel Johnson - Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.

Groucho Marx - From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Moses Hadas - Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

 

[Somme]

Thanks, you lot............)))

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Dorothy Parker on some bad actress: "Her emotions run the gamut from A to B."

Dr. Samuel Johnson (my favorite curmudgeon of all time) on learning that Edward Gibbon had published volume four of his monumetal "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", probably the most famous history ever written: "Another book, Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?"

---dr.M.

 

[jfinn]

A music critic writing about Olivia Newton John's musical performance in Grease, "It's like listening to white bread sing."

But my favorite is a review in Variety of Bob Hope when he was just starting in vaudeville, "He came from nowhere and brought it with him."

Jayne

 

[Svenskaflicka]

"You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner."
Aristophanes

My toughest fight was with my first wife.
Muhammad Ali


Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Otto Von Bismark


If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln


She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
Groucho Marx


I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
Groucho Marx


Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?
Spike Milligan

 

[Guest]

I recall when McCarthy said this on the Tonight Show (big feud ensued).

Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the. —Mary McCarthy, on Lillian Hellman.

These I found and enjoyed:

His verse is the beads without the string. —Gerard Manley Hopkins, on Robert Browning

Sitting in a sewer and adding to it. —Thomas Carlyle, on Algernon Charles Swinburne

An animated adenoid. —Norman Douglas, on Ford Maddox Ford

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master. —Samuel Johnson, on Lord Chesterfield Letters

The stupid person's idea of the clever person. —Elizabeth Bowen, on Aldous Huxley

The arch-Philistine Jeremy Bentham was the insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the bourgeois intelligence of the nineteenth century. —Karl Marx

The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg. —Edmund Wilson

 

[SlickTony]

I think this was from Winston Churchill, but correct me if I'm wrong:

Some woman said to him, "If you were my husband, I'd put poison in your drink."

He said, "If I were your husband, I'd drink it!"

 

[Boota]

The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.
--Author Unknown


Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart
people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean
it.
--Mark Twain

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be
hurled with great force.
--Dorothy Parker


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


If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to
end--I wouldn't be surprised.
-Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)

 

[Guest]

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. —Flannery O'Connor

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one’s sputum. —Vladimir Nabokov

 

[Edward Teach]

A furniture salesman friend of mine said to an extremely rude female customer, "Lady, I want to thank you for giving me a new appreciation for my wife. I used to think she was a bitch."

 

[Edward Teach]

Same salesman (honest) received a memo stating that all traveling salesmen, even those on staight commission, would "work the week of Christmas, death being the only excuse."

He sent the memo back to his boss with the following note:

"Boss, look what some stupid sob sent me and signed your name to."

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?
- Ernest Hemingway, on William Faulkner, in reply

--

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
- Dorothy Parker, on actress Tallulah Bankhead

--

That's not writing, that's typing.
- Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac's style

RF

 

[Belegon]

Who said what?

Because I'm so looking forward to baseball probably had something to do with this, but the musings about whether Churchill said things reminded me of my favorite Berra-ism...

"I never said all the things I said."
- to a reporter asking about his fame as a wordsmith.

 

[Guest]

"You smell." - Prince Phillip

 

[minsue]

Thank you for starting this thread, Colly. When I was looking for a particular quote I found a site that will e-mail you 5 curmudgeonly quotes a day. I'm in seventh heaven. Nothing like a bunch of bitchy remarks to make my day.

My favorite of today's:

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
know how seldom they do. - Olin Miller

 

[Svenskaflicka]

"Some people wouldn't say so much about some people if they only knew what some people are saying about some people!"
Clara Cluck