Timeless Burns from a Trove of Insulting Books

[Prestidigitweeze]

Got any favorites? If so, post away! I'll start you off with this:

"We went to Greece," I heard him say later. I had not heard him for some time except as noise.

"You say you used it or you went there?"

--Ernest H., A Movable Feast

[pynch]

In his dialogue The Decay of Lying Oscar Wilde insults Nature. If it had ears to listen, it would be crying (if it had eyes):

Cyril (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My dear Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.
Vivian. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.
Cyril. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk.
Vivian. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris’s poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of ‘the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name,’ as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don’t complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One’s individuality absolutely leaves one. And then Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come; but I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching—that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct my proofs.

But I’m still trying to find some raunchier stuff.

[guanaco]

Jorge Luis Borges writes in his essay "The art of insult" that the most splendid insult he knows was written by Jose Maria Vargas Vila (Colombian writer) against Jose Santos Chocano (Peruvian poet and diplomat):

The gods did not consent that Santos Chocano disgraced the gallows dying in it. Here is alive, after having fatigued the infamy.

In the same essay, Borges cites doctor Samuel Johnson:

Sir, your wife under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods.

[Greg Anos]

From First Lensman - E. E. Smith PH. D.

The hero is trapped in a mine by an explosion. The water pump that drians the mine is failing, because of a bad design. The hero's comment.

"I could eat a handful of iron filings and puke a better water pump that this!"

[BelleZora]

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut:

“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.”

[Jozawun]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut:

“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.”

I think he nicked that one!

[Fluribus]

I was reading the preface of St. Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. He anticipated that some readers would complain that his work was too difficult to understand.

"To those who do not understand what is here set down, my answer is, that I am not to be blamed for their want of understanding."

In other words, it's not my fault that you're an idiot.

[speakingtohe]

Cannot remember where I read it, but it was in a book and recently so it might come back to me, or maybe the quote was about me.

The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.

Helen

[guanaco]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Cannot remember where I read it, but it was in a book and recently so it might come back to me, or maybe the quote was about me.

The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.

Helen

It seems a popular cliche for a dumb person (more cliches here).

It remembers me an episode for "Blackadder II"

The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr. Brain has long since departed, hasn't he, Perce?
--- Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder II (Episode 4 - Money)

[JDK1962]

From Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. One engineer calls another an a--hole. When told to apologize, the engineer does so: "I'm sorry you're an a--hole."