OT and Long -A Little Baba Ganouche
Carol Frilegh
Anyone can curse. It's a special skill to tell someone off with style
and panache A look at ages past, to learn how to offer insults with
class, by Showey Yazdanian
Good morning, and what do you want, you snotty-faced heap of parrot
droppings? Laxatives are in Aisle Five, bon appetit, you mossy-bowelled
bleeder... have a runny day. Ahoy there, you vacuous, toffee-nosed,
malodorous pervert ... and welcome to Wal-Mart. Please watch your step
... your warts are leaking. Cart or basket? What was that? Stop the
presses, Shakespeare has spoken, ingenious pairing of the "f" word with
"you," bravo, you cancerous lump of nose-pick. Painkillers are in Aisle
8, have a superb overdose.
Abuse is dead. Instead we have boorish, boring vulgarity ‹ two or three
one-size-fits-all sewer swear words. What's sauce for the broken
fingernail is sauce for the thirty-car train wreck. Where's the
panache? Why not exhume the verbal treasures of the English muck mines?
From the playful to the truly vile, let's doff the swears and curse
with class. I'm I.D.'s pretentious international correspondent and THIS
IS CNN! Brought to you by the letter "I:" for your belligerent pleasure
‹ right now! ‹ a whirlwind tour of Planet Insult. You smelly bag of
mongrel corn plop. You sock-sniffing guttersnipe. You reek of
sauerkraut and leprosy.
General Purpose
Vituperation
Apply liberally to the putrid at heart. These pearls of put-down,
courtesy of http://www.dictionary .com (DDC), can be fired at will.
"Blackguard" (pronounced "blaggard," c. 1400s), meaning "a foul
mouthed, utterly disgusting scoundrel," was at one point the height of
disgrace. It was sorely missed this past November in the U.S.
"Busybody" isn't bad, but "quidnunc," from the Latin for "what now?" is
better, meaning a noisy gossip. "Brat" is good, but the three-pronged
"jackanapes" ("a domesticated ape or monkey", "an annoying child", "an
impudent fellow") is marvellous when used upon "one who is unimportant
but cheeky and presumptuous." Like you, for instance.
"Toady" is word-perfect for the warty suck-up after your job: a
sycophant. A servile parasite. According to http://www.etymonline .com,
the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word has its slimy roots in
"toad-eater." A toad-eater (c. 1629) was the assistant of a medical
charlatan who ate or pretended to eat a toad (which at the time was
believed poisonous) in order to display his master's sham skill in
expelling the poison.
I like "suilline" ("of the hog family"), and "Babbitt" isn't bad either
("a self-satisfied, complacent person chiefly interested in business,
middle-class ideals"), but "poltroon" takes the cake ("a base coward").
The next two are from the wonderful site the Toad's Words, an etymology
collection at http://www.doggedresearch.com/toadswords. "Libertine" is
perfect for the cunning curmudgeon: it has a noble, Roman-imperial air
to it, but it just means "a debauched, licentious or immoral man."
"Curmudgeon," by the way, has evolved into a poke that is rather on the
cute side of cantankerous, but firing it at "a crusty, ill-tempered,
and usually old man" may chip at least some of the enamel off those
muddy dentures.
Insults by Shakespeare
These are so plentiful and so delightful that they could easily fill an
entire book ... namely Shakespeare's Insults by Wayne Hill and Cynthia
Ottchen. All of the following are shamelessly lifted from that groovy
tome: unlick'd bear-whelp, quicksand of deceit, scurvy politician, king
of codpieces, rump-fed ronyon, roastmeat for worms, tallow-face and
milksop.
Gentleman's Philippic
Misers and dullards, ugly mugs and atheists, idiots and fatsoes ‹ all
of these gents have their own special, horrible pages in the mighty
Oxford English Dictionary. An ample chunk of insults for men harp on
femininity: the much-maligned girlie-man and his preening cousins.
It's an interesting case of algebra exploding in one's face: a = b (man
= "woman" = insult), b = c (woman = "loose" = insult), but it's
questionable that the logical extension (man = "loose" = insult) is
true. A small taste: nancy-boy, pantywaist, pretty-boy, mamma's boy,
pansy, poofter, nelly, wuss, and of course, the best Schwarzeneggerism
since I'LL BE BOCK: "girlie-man."
"Girlie-man" was popularized in an old Saturday Night Live skit in
which Hans and Franz, two Schwarzeneggeresque meatheads, jeer at people
whose biceps are not preposterously huge. The Gubernator got in on the
joke by using "girlie-men" to attack California legislators over the
state's budget. Despite wide censure of the term as homophobic and
misogynist, he gave an encore performance at the most recent Republican
National Convention, declaring, "And to those critics who are so
pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie men."
Auch.
Variations of "girlie-man" have been around for about as long as it
been undesirable to be female ‹ that is, roughly forever. The ancient
Greeks, for instance, might have taunted each other with "androgynos"
(formed from "andros," meaning "man" and "gyne," meaning "woman").
Indeed, says online blog Laudator Temporis Acti in an August 2004
entry, in Menander's Aspis, a Thracian slave taunts his Phyrgian
counterpart, "Girlie-man (androgynos). We Thracians alone are real men,
a masculine bunch."
Woman Abuse
Insults for women are as profuse as Shatnerites who lust after Seven of
Nine ‹ and almost as dull. Most confine militantly to one of two themes
‹ promiscuity and nagging.
Of the former persuasion are slattern, jezebel, trollop, tramp,
strumpet, quiff and quean. All of these words essentially mean "a cheap
woman," but "slattern" has the added connotation of "slovenly" and
"quean" (from the Old English cwen) implies impudence or ill-behaviour.
Shrew, virago, harridan, scold, termagant, fishwife, and battle-axe all
describe a strident or nagging female.
Of these, "termagant" is probably the most obscure, and the most
fascinating. According to Toad's Words, Termagant was a violent,
riotous (and fictional) Muslim deity in medieval European "morality
plays." Because he was typically dressed in long flowing robes, he was
often mistaken for a woman!
Hence the present definition: a "brawling woman, a shrew" (c. 1659).
INSULTS THAT WEREN'T
"Tramp" only assumed its current connotation of "prostitute" around
1922. For more than 600 years, the word was associated only with the
act of wandering, sometimes aimlessly. "Tramp's" first recorded usage
was in 1388, in the Middle Low German trampen ‹ "to stamp."
It took until roughly the 1630s for the evolution into "vagabond." By
the late 19th century, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, a "tramp"
was a "steamship which takes cargo wherever it can be traded." From
here the word's tumble into the gutter was perhaps inescapable. In New
Zealand and a few other locales, however, "tramping" remains slang for
romping about the countryside on foot.
"Shrew" is a word slightly out of vogue these days, sustained in the
vernacular largely though the popularity of Shakespeare's tale of a
"hell-cat" subdued, The Taming of The Shrew. Its familiar meaning, "a
peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman" is
said to derive from its lesser-known incarnation, found on
dictionary.com, as a "small, insect-nibbling mammal of the family
Soricidae."
Rather cuddly looking, this shrew, or shrewmouse, was once held in
superstitious dread on account of its (false) reputation for a venomous
bite.
Insults That Aren't
It's official: at long last, "pimp" is no longer an insult. Reuters
reports that when EXPN.com ran a photo of stuntman Evel Knievel at the
2001 Action Sports and Music Awards along with the caption "You're
never too old to be a pimp," a seething Kneivel sued, alleging "public
disgrace and scandal." His case was shot down by a three-judge panel
court in San Francisco, that ruled "pimp" was likely intended as a
teen-slang compliment, and therefore did not constitute defamation.
Knievel furiously responded, "What good is law in the United States of
America if five or six goddamn bimbos are going to rule against it?" A
good try, Evel, but since all three of the judges were male, the
correct term would probably be "mimbo" (male bimbo, one of the many
phrases coined on Seinfeld). Thank you, come again.
"Queer" is a queer one indeed, benign until the 1920s, when its first
use as a pejorative for an effeminate or gay male was recorded, says
the Online Etymology Dictionary. The word made its debut in English
after 1508, taking on dual meanings of "oblique, perverse, odd" (from
the Middle Low German dwer, meaning same) and "thwart, ruin, spoil"
(from "thwerr," meaning "diagonal" ‹ literally "not straight" reveals
http://www.takeour word.com) "Queer" re-emerged in the 1990s gay
community as a term of empowerment, and though some continue to abhor
the word, the mainstream popularity of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
has essentially driven "queer" full circle.
Parting shots
I like "nebbish" because it rhymes so beautifully with "rubbish" and
because it conveys loserness like no other word ‹ a poor soul and a sad
sack, all rolled into one, says "Odd Words" from f2.org. Straight from
the dictionary: bête noir ‹ a detested, dreaded person, your very own
pet hate. "Dastard" is a sneaking, malicious coward.
Do you nurse a burning hatred for infomercial rejects? Always searching
for the right words to abuse them with? Well, you're not going to
believe this little piece ... only four easy instalments of the English
alphabet: mountebank ("a boastful, unscrupulous pretender; a flamboyant
charlatan"). Meek, cowardly and gutless? You may just be a milquetoast.
Insidiously unattractive? Fugly, a vulgar and very modern amalgamation
of a certain curse word and ugly, has wormed its way into Bartleby.com.
And last but not least, for the utterly revolting, truly nasty piece of
work ‹ try miscreant ‹ an "evil villain."
Elderberries: The Last Word. Yes, Elderberries
As the acknowledged kings of effrontery, Monty Python gets the last
words (as well as contributing to those in the first paragraphs): "Go
and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you ...
you empty-headed animal food trough wiper! Your mother was a hamster
and your father smelt of elderberries!"
Toronto's Showey Yazdanian is a graduate student studying at Cornell
University. I...@thestar.ca
--
Diva
*****
Hostile cooperation is at the core of passive-aggression,
Donna B
"A dog is not almost human & I know of no greater insult to the canine race
than to describe it as such." - John Holmes
"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners." - Rita Mae
Brown
"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead." - Alexander Pope
"A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest." - Alexanger Pope
"A little emasculated mass of inanity." - Theodore Roosevelt (about Henry
James)
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill
"A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was
waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." - Mark Twain
"A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar & someone had
licked it." - George Bernard Shaw
"An agile but unintelligent & abnormal German, possessed of the mania of
grandeur." - Leo Tolstoy (about Friedrich Nietzsche)
"Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason." - Winston Churchill
"Don't be humble ... you're not that great." - Golda Meir
"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them." - Jonathon Swift
"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
"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid & embalm each
other." - Neil Simon
"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." - Mark
Twain
"God was bored by him." - Victor Hugo
"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach." - Mark Twain
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -
Abraham Lincoln
"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
"He has all the virtues I dislike & none of the vices I admire." - Winston
Churchill
"He has every attribute of a dog except loyalty." - Thomas P. Gore
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde
"He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." - Theodore Roosevelt
"He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul." -
David Lloyd George
"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent
hard work, he overcame them." - James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
"He is a self-made man & worships his creator." - John Bright
"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." -
Samuel Johnson
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death." - H.
H. Munro
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker
"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one." - Earl of
Rochester
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts' for support rather
than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"He was as great as a man can be without morality." - Alexis de Tocqueville
"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 (about
Truman Capote)
"He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." -
Lyndon Baines Johnson (about Gerald Ford)
"Her body has gone to her head." - Barbara Stanwyck (about Marilyn Monroe)
"Her only flair is in her nostrils." - Pauline Kael
"His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open." - Howard
Hughes (about Clark Gable)
"His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole
in it anywhere." - Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away & kept the stork." - Mae West
"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)
"I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest." - Steven
Pearl
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of
it." - Mark Twain
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." -
Stephen Bishop
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"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 never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception." - Groucho
Marx
"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion." - Robert Louis
Stevenson
"I wish I'd known you when you were alive." - Leonard Louis Levinson
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -
Irvin S. Cobb
"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
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -
Charles, Count Talleyrand
"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)
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either." - Kevin White, mayor of
Boston
"Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him
with the ability to write." - A.E. Housman
"Nothing is sooner dry than a woman's tears." - Nathaniel Webster
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -
Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
"She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same
class of people." - Robertson Davies
"She is a peacock in everything but beauty." - Oscar Wilde
"She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered." -
James Matthew Barrie
"She's a vacuum with nipples." - Otto Preminger (about Marilyn Monroe)
"She's been on more laps than a napkin." - Walter Winchell
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." - Oscar
Wilde
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading
it." - Moses Hadas
"The gods too are fond of a joke." - Aristotle
"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not
the power of speech." - George Bernard Shaw
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E.
Leonard
"They don't hardly make 'em like him any more - but just to be on the safe
side, he should be castrated anyway." - Hunter S. Thompson
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." - Mark Twain
"What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement." - Fred Allen
"Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?" - Milton
Berle
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" -
Mark Twain
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?" - Oscar Wilde
"You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice,
bad breeding, and a vulgar manner." - Aristophanes
"You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a
Y-shaped coffin." - Joe Orton
"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young." - Jim Samuels
"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get
rid of it." - Groucho Marx
"Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same
time." - Frederic Raphael
--
Donna B-ready to party @ http://www.marashomemade.com/
Donna B
<420ee3f4...@News.Individual.NET>, karens...@cupcaked.com (Karen S)
wrote:
> Unfortunately, H.L. Menkien was 100% correct when he stated that "no
> one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
> public".
>
> ...and my personal favorite,
>
> "So many freaks, not enough circuses" Anon.
Very nice. I can't find the one about the actress who ran the gamut from A
to B ...
"A cross between an aardvark and an albino rat." - John Simon (about Barbra
Streisand)
"A dork is a dork is a dork." - Judy Markey
"A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a rooster." -
Earl Long
"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults." - Louis Nizer
"A great actress, from the waist down." - Dame Margaret Kendal
"A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed
keeping rabbits." - Edith Sitwell
"A master at making nothing happen very slowly." - Clifton Fadiman
"A mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost." - Tom Waits
"A triumph of the embalmer's art." - Gore Vidal (about Ronald Reagan)
"A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits." - Alexander Pope
"Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the
utterly bewildered." - Al Capp
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite sameness." - David
Shipman
"Always willing to lend a helping hand to the one above him." - F. Scott
Fitzgerald (about Ernest Hemingway)
"An enchanting toad of a man." - Helen Hayes
"Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep." - Dennis
Healy
"Differently clued." - Dave Clark
"Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad." -
Donald Trump (to Larry King)
"Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair." - Josh Billing
"Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's
you." - Groucho Marx
"Don't point that beard at me, it might go off." - Groucho Marx
"End of season sale at the cerebral department." - Gareth Blackstock
"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome." - Oscar
Levant
"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others." - Winston
Churchill
"Failure has gone to his head." - Wilson Mizner
"Had double chins all the way down to his stomach." - Mark Twain
"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and
quoted." - Fred Allen
"Has the mathematical abilities of a Clydesdale." - David Letterman
"He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." -
Lyndon Baines Johnson (about Gerald Ford)
"He's completely unspoiled by failure." - Noel Coward
"He's liked, but he's not well liked." - Arthur Miller
"He's so fat, he can be his own running mate." - Johnny Carson
"He's so small, he's a waste of skin." - Fred Allen
"He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces." - Mae West
"He's the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms." - Mamie Van
Doren (about Warren Beatty)
"He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head." - Margot
Asquith
"He can't help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Ann
Richards (about George Bush)
"He could never see a belt without hitting below it." - Margot Asquith
"He couldn't ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner." - Johnny Carson
(about Chevy Chase)
"He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating." - Ayn
Rand
"He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." - T.S. Eliot (about
Henry James)
"He had a winning smile, but everything else was a loser." - George C. Scott
"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
"He has a chocolate eclair backbone." - Theodore Roosevelt
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde
"He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." - Theodore Roosevelt
"He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul." -
David Lloyd George
"He hasn't an enemy in the world - but all his friends hate him." - Eddie
Cantor
"He is a fine friend. He stabs you in the front." - Leonard Louis Levinson
"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright
"He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him." - Herbert Beerbohm Tree
"He is as good as his word - and his word is no good." - Seamus MacManus
"He is brilliant - to the top of his boots." - David Lloyd George
"He is just about the nastiest little man I've ever known. He struts sitting
down." - Lillian Dykstra (about Thomas Dewey)
"He is mad, bad and dangerous to know." - Lady Caroline Lamb
"He is so mean, he won't let his little baby have more than one measle at a
time." - Eugene Field
"He is so stupid you can't trust him with an idea." - John Steinbeck
"He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease." -
Henry James
"He is the very pineapple of politeness." - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a
political career." - George Bernard Shaw
"He knows so little and knows it so fluently." - Ellen Glasgow
"He looked like a half-melted rubber bulldog." - John Simon
"He looks as though he's been weaned on a pickle." - Alice Roosevelt
Longworth (about Calvin Coolidge)
"He made enemies as naturally as soap makes suds." - Percival Wilde
"He makes a July's day short as December." - William Shakespeare
"He makes a very handsome corpse and becomes his coffin prodigiously." -
Oliver Goldsmith
"He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged." - Simone Signoret
"He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one." - Earl of
Rochester
"He not only overflowed with learning, he stood in the slop." - Sydney Smith
"He strains his conversation through a cigar." - Hamilton Mabie
"He was a bit like a corkscrew. Twisted, cold and sharp." - Kate Cruise
O'Brien
"He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of
his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet." - Truman Capote (about
Faulkner)
"He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
was waiting for a vacancy in the Trilogy." - Mark Twain
"He was about as useful in a crisis as a sheep." - Dorothy Eden
"He was happily married - but his wife wasn't." - Victor Borge
"He was humane but not human." - e e Cummings (about Ezra Pound)
"He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of
the power to use them." - Charles Kingsley
"He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin." -
Dorothy L. Sayers
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes." -
Molly Irvins
"He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both
eyes." - Fred Allen
"He writes his plays for the ages--the ages between five and twelve." -
George Nathan (about George Bernard Shaw)
"He'd make a lovely corpse." - Charles Dickens
"He's a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices." - Gore
Vidal (about Truman Capote)
"Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed." - Ralph Novak
"His features resembled a fossilized washrag." - Alan Brien
"His golf bag does not contain a full set of irons." - Robin Williams
"His ignorance is encyclopedic." - Abba Eban
"His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it." - F. H.
Bradley
"His mind is so open that the wind whistles through it." - Heywood Braun
"His mind was like a soup dish, wide and shallow; it could hold a small
amount of nearly anything, but the slightest jarring spilled the soup into
somebody's lap." - Irving Stone (about William Jennings Bryan)
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West
"His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin." - John Philpot Curran
"His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for
dear life on a sinking ship." - Edmund Wilson (about Evelyn Waugh)
"His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with." -
Charles Lamb
"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at
the stork." - Groucho Marx
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -
Irvin S. Cobb
"I am reading Henry James ... and feel myself as one entombed in a block of
smooth amber." - Virginia Woolf
"I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other
provisions in sight." - Mark Twain
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of
it." - Mark Twain
"I didn't know her well, but after watching her in action I didn't want to
know her well." - Joan Crawford
"I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot." - Oscar Wilde
"I have more talent in my smallest fart than you have in your entire body."
- Walter Matthau
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me."
- Fred Allen
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception." - Groucho
Marx
"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion." - Robert Louis
Stevenson
"I treasure every moment that I do not see her." - Oscar Levant
"I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?" - Ashleigh
Brilliant
"I will always love the false image I had of you." - Ashleigh Brilliant
"I wish I'd known you when you were alive." - Leonard Louis Levinson
"I worship the quicksand he walks in." - Art Buchwald
"I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland." -
Eugene McCarthy
"If he were any dumber, he'd be a tree." - Barry Goldwater
"If I found her floating in my pool, I'd punish my dog." - Joan Rivers
"If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?" - Charles
Pierce
"In her last days, she resembled a spoiled pear." - Gore Vidal (about
Gertrude Stein)
"In her single person she managed to produce the effect of a majority." -
Ellen Glascow
"Is that a beard, or are you eating a muskrat?" - Dr. Gonzo
"It's like cuddling with a Butterball turkey." - Jeff Foxworthy
"Like the little man on top of the wedding cake." - Harold Ickes
"Little things affect little minds." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Mind is so open that the wind whistles through it." - Heywood Braun
"Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed moustache." - Alan
Bennett
"Never trust a man who combs his hair straight from his left armpit." -
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (about Douglas MacArthur)
"Next-day delivery in a nanosecond world." - Van Jacobson
"No more sense of direction than a bunch of firecrackers." - Rob Wagner
"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a
dirty little beast." - W. S. Gilbert
"No woman of our time has gone further with less mental equipment." -
Clifton Fadiman
"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast." - Oscar Wilde
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid."
- Heinrich Heine
"Please try not to be such a wiener-head." - Dave Barry
"Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life." - Ivy Compton-Burnett
"Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault." - Samuel Johnson
"Sharp as a sack full of wet mice." - Foghorn Leghorn
"She's descended from a long line her mother listened to." - Gypsy Rose Lee
"She's good, being gone." - William Shakespeare
"She's got such a narrow mind, when she walks fast her earrings bang
together." - John Cantu
"She's so pure, Moses couldn't even part her knees." - Joan Rivers
"She's the kind of woman who climbed the ladder of success - wrong by
wrong." - Mae West
"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by
their hunted expression." - C. S. Lewis
"She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did." - Ada
Leverson
"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon." - Groucho
Marx
"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for
wit." - W. Somerset Maugham
"She had much in common with Hitler, only no moustache." - Noel Coward
"She has breasts of granite and a mind like a Gruyere cheese." - Billy
Wilder (about Marilyn Monroe)
"She has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age." - Oscar Levant
"She is a water bug on the surface of life." - Gloria Steinem
"She is so hairy,when she lifted up her arm, I thought it was Tina Turner in
her armpit." - Joan Rivers (about Madonna)
"She looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - or anywhere else."
- Elsa Lanchester
"She looked like a huge ball of fur on two well-developed legs." - Nancy
Mitford
"She looks like she combs her hair with an eggbeater." - Louella Parsons
"She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation." - Jean
Webster
"She never was really charming till she died." - Terence
"She not only kept her lovely figure, she's added so much to it." - Bob
Fosse
"She proceeds to dip her little fountain-pen filler into pots of oily venom
and to squirt the mixture at all her friends." - Harold Nicholson
"She should get a divorce and settle down." - Jack Paar
"She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig." -
Margot Asquith
"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake." - Margot Asquith
"She was a master at making nothing happen very slowly." - Clifton Fadiman
"She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers." - Alexander Woollcott
"She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand." -
Saul Bellow
"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork." -
Jonathan Swift
"So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name." - Alan Bennett
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." - Oscar
Wilde
"Some folks are wise and some are otherwise." - Tobias George Smolett
"Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee later than others." -
Kin Hubbard
"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have
mediocrity thrust upon them." - Joseph Heller "Catch-22"
"Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week." - William
Dean Howells
"Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence." - Ashleigh
Brilliant
"Stay with me; I want to be alone." - Joey Adams
"Teflon brain (nothing sticks.)" - Lily Tomlin
"That's not writing, that's typing." - Truman Capote
"The best part of you ran down your mother's legs." - Jackie Gleason
"The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth
was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg." - Edmund Wilson
"The finest woman that ever walked the streets." - Mae West
"The greatest thing since they reinvented unsliced bread." - William Keegan
"The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind." - Joseph
Stilwell
"The triumph of sugar over diabetes." - George Jean Nathan
"The youthful sparkle in his eyes is caused by his contact lenses, which he
keeps highly polished." - Sheila Graham (about Ronald Regan)
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E.
Leonard
"There but for the grace of God, goes God." - Winston Churchill
"There goes the famous good time that was had by all." - Bette Davis
"They don't hardly make 'em like him any more - but just to be on the safe
side, he should be castrated anyway." - Hunter S. Thompson
"Thou lumpish earth-vexing fustilarian." - William Shakespeare
"Thou mammering half-faced measle." - William Shakespeare
"Timid? As timid as a buzzsaw." - George Ells (about Hedda Hopper)
"To err is Truman." - A popular joke in 1946
"Useless as a pulled tooth." - Mary Roberts Rinehart
"We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault." -
Ashleigh Brilliant
"Well, I think we ought to let him hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly
in the wind." - John Ehrlichman
"What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody cares about?
You!" - Murphy Brown
"What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank." -
Liberace
"When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel
sorry - for the clothes." - Josh Billings
"When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?" - David Letterman
"While he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter either." - James
Thurber
"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum." - P. G.
Wodehouse
"Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?" - Groucho
Marx
"Why, this fellow don't know any more about politics than a pig knows about
Sunday." - Harry S Truman (about Dwight D. Eisenhower)
"Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty." - Lillian
Hellman
"You're a mouse studying to be a rat." - Wilson Mizner
"You're a parasite for sore eyes." - Gregory Ratoff
"You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation." - Irvin
S. Cobb
"You had to stand in line to hate him." - Hedda Hopper
"You have a good and kind soul. It just doesn't match the rest of you." -
Norm Papernick
"You have delighted us long enough." - Jane Austen
"You look into his eyes, and you get the feeling someone else is driving." -
David Letterman
"You really have to get to know him to dislike him." - James T. Patterson
(about Thomas Dewey)
Nancy Rudins
> In rec.arts.tv.soaps.cbs on Tue, 08 Feb 2005 16:10:26 GMT in Msg.#
> <420ee3f4...@News.Individual.NET>, karens...@cupcaked.com (Karen
> S) wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately, H.L. Menkien was 100% correct when he stated that "no
>> one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
>> public".
>>
>> ...and my personal favorite,
>>
>> "So many freaks, not enough circuses" Anon.
>
> Very nice. I can't find the one about the actress who ran the gamut from A
> to B ...
That was Dorothy Parker speaking of Katharine Hepburn.
Kind regards,
Nancy
--
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
(lennon/mccartney)
Nancy Rudins nru...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/nrudins/
Donna B
<110i1p7...@news.supernews.com>, Nancy Rudins <nru...@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
wrote:
> Donna B wrote:
> > Very nice. I can't find the one about the actress who ran the gamut from A
> > to B ...
>
> That was Dorothy Parker speaking of Katharine Hepburn.
>
> Kind regards,
> Nancy
Thanks! I thought Katherine Hepburn was on one end, either giving the insult
or receiving it.
[snipping]
--
Donna B-ready to party @ http://www.marashomemade.com/
"A cross between an aardvark and an albino rat." - John Simon (about Barbra
Streisand)
Sarah Estell
"Nancy Rudins" <nru...@ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:110i1p7...@news.supernews.com...
> Donna B wrote:
>
>>
>> Very nice. I can't find the one about the actress who ran the gamut from
>> A
>> to B ...
>
> That was Dorothy Parker speaking of Katharine Hepburn.
My favorite Dorothy Parker quote is "Look at him. He's like a rhinestone in
the rough."
And the A to B quote is about emotions - not talent.
"She (Katherine Hepburn) runs the gamut of emotions - from A to B."
SarahE
Donna B
<fT8Od.12970$0h5....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com>, "Sarah Estell"
<est...@wi.rr.com> wrote:
> My favorite Dorothy Parker quote is "Look at him. He's like a rhinestone in
> the rough."
>
> And the A to B quote is about emotions - not talent.
>
> "She (Katherine Hepburn) runs the gamut of emotions - from A to B."
You don't think that implies talent as an actress?
I love Dorothy Parker!
--
Donna B-ready to party @ http://www.marashomemade.com/
"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get
Sarah Estell
"Donna B" <shall...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:cm6i019iblmfttdad...@4ax.com...
> In rec.arts.tv.soaps.cbs on Tue, 08 Feb 2005 20:00:11 GMT in Msg.#
> <fT8Od.12970$0h5....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com>, "Sarah Estell"
> <est...@wi.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> My favorite Dorothy Parker quote is "Look at him. He's like a rhinestone
>> in
>> the rough."
>>
>> And the A to B quote is about emotions - not talent.
>>
>> "She (Katherine Hepburn) runs the gamut of emotions - from A to B."
>
> You don't think that implies talent as an actress?
Oh yes, definitely. But I thought you were searching for the quote using
the specific word "talent." I was trying to help clarify your search.
>
> I love Dorothy Parker!
Me too! I received a Dorothy Parker calendar several years ago which was my
introduction to her. I love things that make you think - or laugh - or
both!
SarahE
Donna B
<rg9Od.4721$Sq5....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com>, "Sarah Estell"
<est...@wi.rr.com> wrote:
> > You don't think that implies talent as an actress?
>
> Oh yes, definitely. But I thought you were searching for the quote using
> the specific word "talent." I was trying to help clarify your search.
Ah! Very thoughtful of you. I was going to search on 'gamut' as soon as I
had time to look outside my own computer. <G> Talent, yes, that would have
sent me way off the track.
> > I love Dorothy Parker!
>
> Me too! I received a Dorothy Parker calendar several years ago which was my
> introduction to her. I love things that make you think - or laugh - or
> both!
I did adaptations of several of her things for Oral Interp [Reader's
Theatre] in college & then used them again later in community theatre.
Eventually I got The Dorothy Parker Reader. But, I'd be happy to have every
word she ever wrote in some organized fashion. <G>
--
Donna B-ready to party @ http://www.marashomemade.com/
"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young." - Jim Samuels