When insults had class

It's stating the obvious to say that the worst thing about the internet is the horde of morons that populate it (present company excluded, of course). I will admit to antagonising these sad excuses for human beings for my own amusement in the past. What can I say? As a kid I used to stir up ant's nests.

But no more. I'm done with these losers. I refuse to even acknowledge their pathetic attempts at insults until they make a decent effort. They may never reach the standard of the classics listed below but I'm not going to indulge people who don't even try.

There really was a time when insults had class.

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

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

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

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

"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

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

"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

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." --
Jack E. Leonard

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." --
James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"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..." --
Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts... for support rather than illumination. " --
Andrew Lang

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


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok9g-hmMQFI