Literary Insults 2 by Warren Bull

Literary Insults 2 by Warren Bull

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Dorothy Parker can also be the inspiration for insults of quality:

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

"Men don't like nobility in a woman. Not any men. I suppose it is because the men like to have the copyrights on nobility—if there is going to be anything like that in a relationship."

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'no' in any of them."

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."

"If all the young ladies who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised."

To a man she found annoying: "With the crown of thorns I wear, why should I worry about a little prick like you?"

When an actress said to her, “I loved your book. Who wrote it for you?”

Dorothy replied, “Oh, thank you. Who read it to you?”

On hearing Calvin Coolidge had died, Dorothy Parker remarked, “How can they tell?”

Literary Insults 1 by Warren Bull

Literary Insults 1 by Warren Bull

Image by Erik Mclean on Upsplash

When you run out of insults, consider these:

King Lear, William Shakespeare

“Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch.”

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

“I told him he didn’t even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn’t care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

Matilda, Roald Dahl

“You blithering idiot! … You festering gumboil! You fleabitten fungus! … You bursting blister! You moth-eaten maggot!”

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

“Well, well, well, well. If it isn’t fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.”

As You Like It, William Shakespeare

“I desire that we be better strangers.”

The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell

“He is simply a hole in the air.”

Janet's Repentance (taken from Scenes of Clerical Life), George Eliot

“A deistical prater, fit to sit in the chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers.”

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

“I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.”

Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Truman Capote

“It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll give you two.”

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

“I misjudged you… You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.”

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

“He would make a lovely corpse”

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

"You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you."

The Dying Animal, Philip Roth

"Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up."