Top 100 The Insult Quotes
#1. He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#2. [Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.
Virginia Woolf
#3. The future belongs to you. Should anyone insult you, tell yourself this: I am a child of destiny who will unite East and West and change the world.
Adeline Yen Mah
#4. Even a hare, the weakest of animals, may insult a dead lion.
Aesop
#5. The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.
Isabel Allende
#6. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.
Janet Fitch
#7. He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.
Samuel Foote
#8. Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.
Charlotte Bronte
#9. You will certainly grant me that neither antiquity nor whatever nation has devised a more repulsive and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating your God. This is the most disgusting dogma of Christian religion, the greatest insult to the Highest Being, the climax of madness and insanity.
Frederick The Great
#10. Patriotism means advocating plunder in the interests of the privileged class of your particular country. The time will soon come when calling someone a patriot will be the deepest insult.
Ernest Belfort Bax
#11. Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Jonathan Swift
#12. Anthropologist Mary Douglas (1991) examines the very thin line separating a joke from an insult: a joke expresses something a community is ready to hear; an insult expresses something it doesn't want to consider.
Henry Jenkins
#13. In my normal world, cars do not go off the road and explode. Please, do not insult my intelligence.
K.J. Cales
#14. It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.
Al Alvarez
#15. It's okay to be proud of your good English. But don't be proud of being poor at your Mother tongue. Only the scum of the earth do that.
Manasa Rao
#16. Insult is powerful. Insult begets both rage and humor and often at the same time.
Suzanne Fields
#17. No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs.
Richard Stallman
#18. People will doubt you, but do you doubt your own self? People will insult your integrity, but do you trust yourself? If you are at peace with yourself and with God, you can be at peace with the world.
Nana Awere Damoah
#19. This guy was making me tired. "Thanks for the afternoon's entertainment," I said. "I'll flush a copy of my bill down the toilet. You should be getting it in a couple of days.
John Swartzwelder
#21. He who does not take insults seriously, is on the path to wisdom.
Paulo Coelho
#22. Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face.
Sarah Dunant
#23. In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.
Criss Jami
#24. I Believe she thought I had forgotten my station; and yours, sir.'
'Station! Station!
your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.
Charlotte Bronte
#25. The only insult I've ever received in my adult life was when someone asked me, "Do you have a hobby?" A HOBBY?! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING DABBLER?!
John Waters
#27. Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed from the front of the house. "What an egregious insult to good taste.
John Kennedy Toole
#28. He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]
Winston S. Churchill
#29. There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.
James Buchan
#30. She was quick of mind and swift of tongue, always ready to answer a set down with the kind of witty rebuke most of us can think of only long after the moment of insult has passed.
Geraldine Brooks
#31. What I loved about it was language-wise it wasn't that finely-tuned-perfect-insult-for-the-perfect-situation that sometimes we try and do on Veep.
David Mandel
#32. You couldn't find your dick in the dark, you scheming, sleaze-mongering scumwad.
Nenia Campbell
#33. I believe no-one can insult you without your permission. Shilpa Shetty has paid the price for trying to desperately seek the approval of the West. It is pathetic how we can go on bended knees and lick the boots of Westerners in an effort to be part of their world.
Mahesh Bhatt
#34. The English understand the nuance of insult better than any other race
Helen Bryan
#35. (Slap) "Owhhh ... " Raymond yelled as the Old Man's cane hit his face.
Judy Byington
#36. Though I never shout at Labour Members or insult them, I can never understand the psychology of some of our men who endeavoured to reason with them.
Neville Chamberlain
#37. Everyone's so timid and afraid to insult anybody, but in the end, it's like we're all trying to please everyone. In the end, we please no one.
Olivia Munn
#38. I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
- Churchill's response
George Bernard Shaw
#39. President Obama's actions are an unconscionable betrayal of America's fundamental values and a profound insult to the oppressed Cuban people.
Mario Diaz-Balart
#40. It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.
Anne Rice
#41. To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.
Claude Adrien Helvetius
#42. Americans can't stand any stranger looking them in the face. They take it as an insult. It's something they don't forgive. And every American carries a gun. If they catch you, a stranger, looking them in the face, they will shoot.
Okey Ndibe
#43. The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living.
Ayn Rand
#44. To call A Lot like Love dead in the water is an insult to water.
Roger Ebert
#45. Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.
Harold Holzer
#46. When people want to insult a man, they cast slurs upon his courage. But the worst they can say about a woman is to impugn her chastity.
Sharon Kay Penman
#47. Would it insult you if I used your alphabet? I don't think I could start from scratch.
Clay Griffith
#48. If a mark of affection can sometimes be taken for an insult, perhaps the gesture of love is not universal: it too must be translated from one language to another, must be learned.
Kim Thuy
#49. He's a pig and I don't allow livestock in the house.
Erin McCarthy
#50. It makes me sick to see a superior runner wait behind the field until 200 meters to go and then sprint away. That is immoral. It's both an insult to the other runners and a denigration of his own ability.
Ron Clarke
#51. For a minister's daughter," he said, "you hit hard ... and quite often, below the belt too.
Essie Summers
#52. The radiance of this beautiful scene shed a cruel light on every past horror, every insult tolerated, every unspoken retort, every gesture of rejection. Marianne was grieving, and her boundless grief made her regret every moment of cowardice in her life.
Nina George
#53. But you're not that smart, I mean, your species is responsible for Windows Vista." "Vist- that was a long time ago!" "It's still an insult to computers across the galaxy.
Craig Alanson
#54. The truth is: Everyone will judge you. But this depends upon your intellectual capacity whether you are able to distinguish constructive criticism between an insult coming from other people's opinions about you.
Anonymous
#55. The musical equivalent of St Pancras Station.
(on Elgar)
Thomas Beecham
#56. People say I seem very negative about new music - well, if somebody asks me what I think of Keane, I'll tell 'em. I don't like 'em. I'll obviously take it a step too far and grossly insult the keyboard player's mam or summat, but I'm afraid that's just me.
Noel Gallagher
#57. I think the biggest insult, the worst way you can offend a Mexican, is to insult their mother. A mother is the most sacred thing in life.
Emiliano Salinas
#58. No, no, you twit, move towards the well-hung male of the species! It's only natural; you don't want to insult Mother Nature. Go claim your mate.
Jenna McCormick
#59. I lifted the lid and found a piece of bread and some water - and a rat that quickly darted off the tray. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Richelle Mead
#60. The English love an insult. It's their only test of a man's sincerity.
Benjamin Franklin
#61. Poets should be law-givers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#62. If you're going to yell at me, do it in English, please. I'd like to understand the insult so I can frame an appropriately pithy response.
Chloe Neill
#63. Let somebody insult you and see that that you do not answer back. Just see it, not to get into temper. Try that your ego doesn't react. That can be achieved very easily if you try in the mirror, look at yourself and laugh at yourself, make fun of yourself.
Nirmala Srivastava
#64. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Mary Schmich
#65. She's so ugly, the tide wouldn't take her out.
Martin Kaye
#66. If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.
Tanith Lee
#67. Somebody sniggered. From Somewhere int he back of the room someone else sneered, "Yeah, Hazel," which was not the greatest insult ever, but one thing Hazel had learned at her new school was when it comes to insults it's the thought that counts
Anne Ursu
#68. It seems an insult to nature and to the Creator to imagine that pregnancy was ever intended to be a sickness.
Eliza Bisbee Duffey
#69. I've told you before, Daniel: roach isn't an insult. We're the ones still standing after the mammals build their nukes, we're the ones with the stripped-down OS's so damned simple they work under almost any circumstances. We're the goddamned Kalashnikovs of thinking meat.
Peter Watts
#70. To-day the woman is Mrs. Richard Roe, to-morrow Mrs. John Doe, and again Mrs. James Smith according as she changes masters, and she has so little self-respect that she does not see the insult of the custom.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#71. Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
Daniel Pipes
#72. What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up with a terrific-ally witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at parties.
Dave Barry
#73. Come, come," I said. "You may be a lord someday, but you aren't one yet. No need for the courtly manners, and certainly not the moody temper. If you're to be my escort tonight, I insist you be a cheery one. You can even insult me if you like. It always makes you feel better.
Julie Berry
#74. Relationship never starts with a fist to the face, or an insult. If it did there'd be no second date. It always starts gently. Kindly. The other person draws you in. To trust them. To need them. And then they slowly turn. Little by little, increasing the heat. Until you're trapped.
Louise Penny
#75. The biggest insult is that I've been called an exaggerator ... I tell the truth as I know it. I don't glamorize the nightmare and horror that I witness; I just digest it and spew it back, with venom.
Lydia Lunch
#76. REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
Ambrose Bierce
#77. Who the hell do you think you're, Kiddo?
I don't do thinking, Sir. I simply improvise.
Toba Beta
#78. A friend of mankind with shaky moral foundation is a cannibal of mankind, to say nothing of his vainglory; insult the vainglory of one of these numberless friends of mankind, and he is ready at once to set fire to the four corners of the world out of petty vengence
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#79. I'd sneer and tell him he's got the cerebral finesse of an amoeba and delight in his squint of confusion.
Craig Silvey
#80. Seth glanced back over his shoulder at the door. Alex, you're starting to worry me. Insult me ... or something.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#81. It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.'
By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!
G.K. Chesterton
#82. When I was running for speaker, people would go out of their way to point out why I wasn't going to win: 'You're a woman, you're too liberal, you're gay, you're from the West Side of Manhattan,' which in that context was an insult.
Christine Quinn
#83. Ivan gabbled something in Shu that I didn't understand. The giant just laughed.
"You speak Shu like a tourist," he said.
Leigh Bardugo
#84. You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.
John Green
#85. Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.
Hanif Kureishi
#86. What's humorous to me about using "bitch" as an insult is that it clearly illustrates just how marginalized women really are; for this singular insult stands to throw us out of the human species altogether, and quite literally, to the dogs.
Brandon Kelly
#87. Not everyone can look past an insult and continue to work with the person who slights them
Jean Johnson
#88. You have a mind like the rings of Saturn. A million miles wide and an inch deep.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#89. the little governor in most mature adults' brains that told them the difference between polite commentary and insult was completely missing from Fletcher.
Melanie Schuster
#90. Puta, really, that's the best insult you got? I've been called the Whore of Babylon on national TV; puta just doesn't quite cut it.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#91. I was in a delirium of destruction, as if the body were an insult to the philosophy of my life, and only in destroying it could I reclaim my sanity.
Stephen Hunter
#92. Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.
D.H. Lawrence
#93. Ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learned by Now Volume II There
Richard K. Morgan
#94. Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.
Cordell Hull
#95. Why does even the best person hold back something from another? Why not say directly what we feel if we know that what we entrust won't be scattered to the winds? As it is, everyone looks much tougher than he really is, as if he felt it'd be an insult to his feeling if he expressed them too readily.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#97. Intelligence'?" repeated Magorian, as Bane and several others roared with rage and pawed the ground. "We consider that a great insult, human!
J.K. Rowling
#98. It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word
on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.
Epictetus
#99. Teach positively, never abuse kids in the teaching process. I believe it is cowardly to teach in a negative way, to insult players, or challenge their manhood.
Gordie Gillespie
#100. The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.
Orson Scott Card
