Skip to main content

When Insults had Class

These very expressive insults are from an era, before the English language boiled down to four-letter and crude words.

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:

She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison."
He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."

"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

"He had delusions of adequacy."

- Walter Kerr

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

- 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 reading it." 

- Moses Hadas

"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 feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." 

- Stephen Bishop

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

- John Bright

"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

"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

"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 they go.." 

- Oscar Wilde

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

- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." 

- Billy Wilder

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

- Groucho Marx

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Moldy Middle

While taking statistics during my quest to get an MBA and while earning my engineering degree, the professors always emphasized the importance of finding the statistical mean of any population by using the Central Mean Theorem (a.k.a the highest point of the Bell Curve). As an engineer, this was essential in order to maximize throughput, minimize cost and waste, and ultimately make a better, faster, cheaper widget. A funny thing happened on the way to the dark side of marketing. I discovered that the only thing in the middle of the road was quite literally dead road kill. I do not know if you remember stores like Bradlees, Ames and Service Merchandise (just to name a few), but they all folded because the environment changed and they were caught trying to service the mythological “average customer.” Part of that change came when Wal-Mart began its juggernaut with the discount department store. Wal-Mart did two things right: 1) Focused on “mobile” consumers, and 2) Fo...

Fortune Cookie of Persistence

There are many things or factors that can determine a person’s success or failure, but one thing that cuts across EVERY successful person I have met or read about or studied is perseverance, persistence, stick-to-itiveness, and determination. As I say, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. The desire and ability to press on has and always will solve the problems of the human race and divide those who achieve from those who might have been." Incredibly, this ONE characteristic is really what makes a true entrepreneur as testimony to these little factoids: Coca-Cola only sold twenty five (25) bottles in its first year of business! They grossed $50.0 and spent $73.96 on merchandising. But they kept on going and never gave up, and nowadays the sell more than one billion bottles per day! Apple Computer co-founder offered the computer design to Hewlett-Packard five times and was rejected by both HP and Atari (the giant at the time) for acquisition. A...

Your Customers (and your Mother) Always Know

Over the years, I have been amazed at the number of businesses that think they can "get away" with something with their customers. Either by lowering product standards, charging for useless features, making it more difficult to get customer service, or just flat out lying to them. So, I will explain why this is so detrimental with a short little story about a mother and her son and the son's female roommate. It involves the eternal knowledge and wisdom of mothers, and if you try to “pull something over their eyes” they have a way of using your own words to pry the truth out...just like your  customers. ___________________________________________________ A Mother comes to visit her son for dinner. He lives with a female roommate. During the course of the meal, his mother couldn't help but notice how pretty her son's roommate is. Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between her son and his ro...