Elegant insults.

[rug]

[angstlessk]

1. LOL so very apropos

[Locut0s]

2. Thanks. Here are some of my favs:

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."

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"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.

"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

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

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

[rug]

3. I love that stuff. The Churchill/Shaw one is classic.

Here's another Churchill one.



I can see why he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

[Major Nikon]

5. ...

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the into the smallest amount of thought.

[rug]

6. Oh his ideas are imperialist racist horseshit, but his words are crisp.

Give the devil his due.

[IrishAyes]

7. Yes, and that's exactly what he was.

However, to give credit where credit's due: Supposedly at a state dinner, some high official from another country was seen pocketing silver salt and pepper shakers. Not wanting to allow an international incident, Winnie is said to have pocketed a pair himself before sidling up to the guy and whispering, "We've both been observed. We'd better put them back."

He was against female suffrage, btw, along with Woodrow Wilson, who had some of my particular heroes arrested for picketing the WH on that matter. We won't go into what Churchill did to Ireland.

I did love Dorothy Parker though.

[kwassa]

4. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”

Thomas Brackett Reed, Speaker of the House

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

[eppur_se_muova]

8. "I would love to go to Japan -- I hear it is the only country where they have no pigs and no Jews!"

"You and I should go together, then -- "

Czar Alexander, a notorious anti-Semite, objected to finding himself at a banquet seated near British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Not about to pass himself off as a civilized guest, at one point the Czar loudly exclaimed "I should very much like to visit Japan! I understand it is the only country in the world where they have no pigs and no Jews!". Disraeli smilingly suggested that "Why, you and I should go together then. That way they would have a sample of each."

(I'm remembering this from nearly 30 years ago, so I may have gotten some details wrong. If anyone knows where to find a citation for this, I'd like to know.)

(Alexander I or II? Oh, hell, I don't know. "It was a difficult voyage over, and I may have miscounted.&quot