Best literary insults: fantastic written down put-downs

“I desire that we be better strangers.”

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

“I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.”

“He is simply a hole in the air.”

“If you will forgive me for being personal… I don’t like your face.”

“He would make a lovely corpse”

"You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you."

"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on."

“I misjudged you… You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.”

“You see, but you do not observe.”

"Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up."

"I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”

“The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.”

"He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."

"He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation."

“Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch.”

"People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy."

“I told him he didn’t even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn’t care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

“As Jesus said to me once, Greg, what's your secret? And I said, Jesus--study your notes! Get to class! Shave that beard! You show up to your first day on the job dressed like a hippie, of course they're going to crucify you, I don't care whose son you are . . ."

"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."

“It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll give you two.”

“In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement right up to your neck. No… right up to your nose… that’s much quieter.”

“You are the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.”

“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”

"She is nuttier than squirrel poo."

“You blithering idiot! … You festering gumboil! You fleabitten fungus! … You bursting blister! You moth-eaten maggot!”

"You should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so."

“I think you're a taker. You've always been one. It's like God left some part of you out when He built you inside of me.”

“You bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation.”

"You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all."

“Thou woldest make me kisse thyn old breech, And swere it were a relyk of a saint, Though it were with thy fundement depeint!… I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond… Lat kutte hem of”

(“You’d have me kiss your old trousers and swear they were the relic of a saint, even though they’re stained with your s—… I wish I had your balls in my hand… I’d cut them off.

"He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

"Your hair wants cutting"

"Without your art you are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, an you would have borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face."

“Well, well, well, well. If it isn’t fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.”

“She’s not leaving me. Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”

“Critic!”

“Thy aunts have never had a nose for seven generations!”

"Some day you’ll show up when I’m back where I belong in this world. When I have what I ought to have. My due. And when you do. My gamekeepers will drive you out and away for good. Out. Away. Out."

“Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.”

"Thou wretch! - thou vixen! - thou shrew!" said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding, "thou witch! - thou hag! - thou whipper-snapper! - thou sink of iniquity - thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable! - thou - thou-"

“A deistical prater, fit to sit in the chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers.”

“I only had sex with her because I'm in love with you.”

“If you see kay

Tell him he may

See you in tea

Tell him from me.”

“You teach me now how cruel you've been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you—they'll damn you.”

"What a pair of frauds."

"You're a beast and a swine and a bloody, bloody thief!"

"You keep runnin’ that mouth and I'm goin’ to take you back there and screw you."

“This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion!”

"I could get you strung up in a tree so easy it ain't even funny."