Time for a new game, this one dedicated to the best insults of all time.
Quotes can come from any source: movies, TV shows, books, comics, as well as real life (including apocryphal quotes). Citing the source is allowed, but not required.
Simple as that. Okay, let’s begin:
“You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957.”
“It was very good of God to let the Carlyles marry each other. In that way, only two people were made miserable, instead of four.” Samuel Butler.
[Have you seen Thick Of It from the BBC? Peter Capaldi is rather brilliant. It’s on Hulu now.]
“FUCK’S SAKE! JESUS CHRIST! Well, now we’ve got another fuckin’ adjective to add to fuckin’ ‘smug’ and ‘glum’, haven’t we? FUCKIN’ ‘RETARDED’! Jesus Chri-- Do you not think it would be germane to check who you’re talking to?! IT’S A FUCKIN’ NEWSPAPER OFFICE! IT’S NOT A FUCKIN’ SANATORIUM FOR THE FUCKIN’ DEAF, IS IT?! ARE YOU SO DENSE?! Am I gonna have to run around slapping badges on people, with a big tick on some and a big cross on others, so you know when to shut your gob and when to open it?! Jesus Christ! Oh, but that’ll probably confuse you as well, won’t it?! That’d be too confusing! You’d see the cross and go “Oh, fuck! ‘X’ marks the spot! Better tell this little person about the Prime Minister’s fucking CATASTROPHIC ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!” Oh, but not to worry, not to worry. You’ve sent fuckin’ Ollie over there to deal with it. FUCKIN’ OLLIE! HE’S A FUCKIN’, HE’S A FUCKIN’ KNITTED SCARF, THAT TWAT! HE’S A FUCKIN’ BALACLAVA!!”
scruffy-lookin nerf herder?
“Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish!”
Henry IV, Part 1, Act 2, Scene 4
Fat Customer: “How dare you say that to my face!”
Al Bundy: “I’d say it behind your back, but my car’s only got half a tank of gas!”
If you want my comeback, you’ll have to scrape it off your mum’s teeth.
– Jimmy Carr to a heckler.
You miserable vomitous mass.
From the movie Roxanne:
Let’s start with… Obvious: 'scuse me, is that your nose or did a bus park on your face? Meteorological: everybody take cover, she’s going to blow! Fashionable: you know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore something larger, like… Wyoming. Personal: well, here we are, just the three of us. Punctual: all right, Delbman, your nose was on time but YOU were fifteen minutes late! Envious: Ooooh, I wish I were you! Gosh, to be able to smell your own ear! Naughty: uh, pardon me, sir, some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn’t mind putting that thing away. Philosophical: you know, it’s not the size of a nose that’s important, it’s what’s IN IT that matters. Humorous: laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze, and it’s goodbye, Seattle! Commercial: hi, I’m Earl Scheib, and I can paint that nose for $39.95! Polite: uh, would you mind not bobbing your head? The, uh, orchestra keeps changing tempo. Melodic: Everybody. He’s got…
Everyone: [singing] The whole world in his nose!
C.D. Bales: Sympathetic: aw, what happened? Did your parents lose a bet with God? Complimentary: you must love the little birdies to give them this to perch on. Scientific: Say, does that thing there influence the tides? Obscure: whoa! I’d hate to see the grindstone. Well, think about it. Inquiring: when you stop to smell the flowers, are they afraid? French: saihr, ze pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave! Pornographic: finally, a man who can satisfy two women at once! How many is that?
Dean: Fourteen, Chief!
C.D. Bales: Religious: the Lord giveth… and He just kept on giving, didn’t He? Disgusting: Say, who mows your nose hair? Paranoid: keep that guy away from my cocaine! Aromatic: it must wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the coffee… in Brazil. Appreciative: Oooh, how original! Most people just have their teeth capped.
[he pauses, pretending to be stumped, while the crowd urges him on]
C.D. Bales: All right. Dirty: your name wouldn’t be Dick, would it?
Describing an acquaintance, Dorothy Parker said, “That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say ‘no’ in any of them.”
On discussing a Broadway show, Robert Benchley said, “It was one of those plays in which all the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.”
When asked his opinion on a play he had attended, George S. Kaufman reportedly said, “I saw it under bad conditions; the curtain was up.”
After seeing a young Katharine Hepburn in a stage play Dorothy Parker remarked, “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
When asked to sign a copy of his new book, Shouts and Murmurs, Alexander Woollcott sighed, “Ah, what is so rare as a Woollcott first edition!” Franklin Pierce Adams replied, “A Woollcott second edition.”
On hearing Calvin Coolidge had died, Dorothy Parker remarked, “How can they tell?”
Some great ones from Blackadder:
“You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would. Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly and the part of you that can’t be mentioned, I am reliably informed by women around the Court, wouldn’t be worth mentioning even if it could be.”
“Baldrick, you wouldn’t recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing ‘subtle plans are here again’.”
“Bloody explorers, ponce off to Mumbo Jumbo land, come home with a tropical disease, a suntan and a bag of brown lumpy things, and Bob’s your uncle, everyone’s got a picture of them in the lavatory.”
“To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was something that just happened to other people, wasn’t it?”
“They do say, Mrs M, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. They are, of course, wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick this toasting fork into your head.”
You have the intellectual ability of a small soap dish.
(“Dial-a-curse” from National Lampoon’s That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick!)
Winston Churchill’s son Randolph had a growth removed from his lung. Upon hearing that the growth was benign, Evelyn Waugh remarked, “It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it.”
Fat Customer: “I’m not sure I like this shade of blue.”
Al Bundy: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do then. We’ll stand you in front of a mirror. I’ll begin strangling you. When you reach the shade of blue that is satisfactory to you, you yell ‘Moo!’ and I’ll stop.”
Fat Customer: “That’s it. I’m taking my business elsewhere!”
Al Bundy: “May I suggest Jenny Craig?”
Complaining about former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s lack of gusto, Churchill said:
“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as “The Boneless Wonder”. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralising and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see the The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.“
He’s an asshole! I don’t care what Tannen says! And I don’t care what anyone else says, either.
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
― Raylan Givens
You fat, bloated sack of protoplasm. - Ren Höek
“Clint’s idea of a good time is sitting on a pickup truck watching his dog bark.” — Don Rickles at the Clint Eastwood Roast, 1986
Mr. Burns: “Let me get this straight. You’re pleased with your current appearance? You’re the fattest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been on safari!”