George Bernard Shaw
Classy insults
If you love clever use of words these classy insults from a former era might tickle your fancy and brighten your day when the news is grim and the weather forecast is on the highest alert.
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”
Winston Churchill:
“Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second … If there is one.”
A member of Parliament to Disraeli:
“Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”
Disraeli:
“That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
Walter Kerr:
“He had delusions of adequacy.”
Clarence Darrow:
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway:
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
Moses Hadas:
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”
Mark Twain:
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
Oscar Wilde:
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
Stephen Bishop:
“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
John Bright:
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
Irvin S. Cobb:
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Samuel Johnson:
“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
Paul Keating:
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
Charles, Count Talleyrand:
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
Forrest Tucker:
“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
Mark Twain:
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
Mae West:
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
Oscar Wilde:
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
Andrew Lang:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts … for support rather than illumination.”
Billy Wilder:
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
Groucho Marx:
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
Winston Churchill:
‘He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Sometimes it’s enough just to have a good laugh.
Separate tags with commas
Add New Custom Field:
- “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.
22.”He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
In Dublin’s fair city
Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Dean Jonathan Swift, WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett … yes, all famous writers. And all sons of Ireland.
I’ve just returned from Dublin’s fair city, ‘where the girls are so pretty’ – home of everything from the tragic heroine Molly Malone herself, to the famous Book Of Kells and the amazing library of Trinity College – greatly encouraged. Because writing and storytelling are very much at the heart of things.
Whether you follow a City Tour, or visit the Writers Museum in Parnell Square, or chat to the Irish in their natural habitats, you’ll hear tales of homegrown literary giants; tales moreover told in wonderfully lyrical Irish accents which are poetry in themselves. Some of the detail may be embellished (as one guide said, ‘Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?’), but the essence is the same: Dubliners are proud of their literary heritage. Even ordinary people tell of at least trying to get to grips with Ulysses – the story of the experiences which beset a Dubliner, Lionel Bloom, on 16 June 1904 when his voluptuous wife Molly commits adultery – which is more than can be said of most Joe Bloggs elsewhere, isn’t it?
I suspect the majority of us could get no further than the occasional famous quote from this particular classic: ‘history … is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake’, maybe, or ‘God is a shout in the street’, or ‘Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance’, or possibly, ‘To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.’ And indeed, even if we’re familiar with the sayings, how many of us knew they’re from the hand of James Joyce?
If ever I decide to seriously tackle this epic with all its density and complexity and impenetrable prose, I think I stand the best chance of persevering if I’m in Dublin itself, surrounded by people who admire and revere its author. People who don’t closet their acclaimed writers away in an esoteric museum. No. Rather they erect statues of them; they call buildings, bridges, roads after them; they speak of them on the buses, in the pubs and cafés. A nation that is proud of her men of letters. Brilliant.