When Insults Had Class

"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

"I have 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 feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here."

— Stephen Bishop

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

— John Bright

"I just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial."

— Irvin S. Cobb

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

— William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend — if you have one."

— From George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night. Will attend second night — if there is one."

— Churchill’s response to Shaw

"He is not only dull himself — he is the cause of dullness in others."

— Samuel Jackson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

— Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."

— Walter Kerr

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

— Mae West

"Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee."

— Lady Astor, to Winston Churchill, at a dinner party:

"Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it."

— Churchill’s reply to Lady Astor

Some gender benders

— One day, a man said to his wife,
"I don’t see how you can be so beautiful and so stupid at the same time."

His wife replied:
"God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me. God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you."

— A man and his wife were having a spat at home and giving each other the silent treatment. Then he realized that he needed his wife to wake him up at 5 the next morning to catch a plane for a business flight. So he handed his wife a note that read, "Please wake me up at 5 a.m."

That night, he slept soundly until 8:30 in the morning, and when he finally woke up, there was a note from his wife on her pillow, "It is now 5 a.m. Wake up!"

— A man read a newspaper article to his wife about how many words each gender speaks each day — 30,000 for women, only 15,000 for men. "See," he told her, "women talk too much."

His wife replied, "That’s because we have to repeat everything we say to men."

Her husband said, "What?"

— After an argument while on a driving trip, a man and his wife continued traveling for several miles without a word. When they passed a barnyard filled with mules, goats and pigs, the husband sarcastically asked her, "Are those relatives of yours?"

"They sure are," she replied. "They’re in-laws."

Once a pun a time

— Dijon vu — the same mustard all over again.

— Practice safe eating: Always use condiments.

— If you jump off a bridge in Paris, you are in Seine.

— Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

— A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

— Dancing cheek-to-cheek is a form of floor play.

— Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

— When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.

— Definition of a will: a dead giveaway.

— A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

— If you don’t pay your exorcist, you could get repossessed.

— When a clock gets hungry, it goes back four seconds.

— When she saw her first gray hairs, she thought she’d dye.

— If you take a laptop computer for run, you may jog your memory.

— Every calendar’s days are numbered.

— Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

— When the smog lifts in Westwood, UCLA.

— Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

— Most money is really tainted — ’taint yours and ’taint mine.