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)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?
-Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

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

"I've had a perfectly wounderful 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 play. Bring a friend... if you have one"
-George Bernard to Winston Churchill

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

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

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

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial"
-Irving 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 has delusions of adequacy"
-Walter Kerr

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

"He has the attention span of a lighting bolt"
-Robert Redford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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