"literary insults"

"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." -Louis Nizer

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

"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

"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors
open." -Howard Hughes (about Clark Gable)

"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 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

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

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

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

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

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

"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked
like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." -Mark
Twain

"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

"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." -Oscar Wilde

"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

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts...
for support rather than illumination." -Andrew Lang
(1844-1912)