"Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #117
"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." - Louis Nizer (1902 - 1994) English lawyer
"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them." - Jonathon Swift
"What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement." - Fred Allen
"You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner." - Aristophanes
"The Gods too are fond of a joke." - Aristotle
"She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered." - James Matthew Barrie
"Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?" - Milton Berle
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop
"He is a self-made man & worships his creator." - John Bright
"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
"Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason." - Winston Churchill
"I may be drunk madame, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will be just as ugly." - Winston Churchill (when asked if he was drunk)
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people." - Robertson Davies
"He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea and that was wrong." - Benjamin Disraeli
"He was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met." - William Faulkner
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul." - David Lloyd George
"He has every attribute of a dog except loyalty." - Thomas P. Gore
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
"Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write." - A.E. Housman
"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open." - Howard Hughes (about Clark Gable)
"God was bored by him." - Victor Hugo
"He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." - Lyndon Baines Johnson (about Gerald Ford)
"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
"Her only flair is in her nostrils." - Pauline Kael
"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E. Leonard
"I wish I'd known you when you were alive." - Leonard Louis Levinson
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln
"His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea." - William McAdoo (about Warren Harding)
"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it." - Groucho Marx
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception." - Groucho Marx
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." - Groucho Marx
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
"Don't be humble...you're not that great." - Golda Meir
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death." - H. H. Munro
"It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt." - Thomas Paine (about John Adams)
"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead." - Alexander Pope
"A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest." - Alexanger Pope
"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)
"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one." - Earl of Rochester
"He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." - Theodore Roosevelt
"A little emasculated mass of inanity." - Theodore Roosevelt (about Henry James)
"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young." - Jim Samuels
"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation, but not the power of speech." - George Bernard Shaw
"A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it." - George Bernard Shaw
"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other." - Neil Simon
"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion." - Robert Louis Stevenson
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He was as great as a man can be without morality." - Alexis de Tocqueville
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker
"His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere." - Mark Twain
"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
"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach." - 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
"Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow." - Franklin K. Dane
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?" - Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits." - Edith Sitwell