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 would make a lovely corpse”

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

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

“He is simply a hole in the air.”

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

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

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

“You see, but you do not observe.”

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

"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."

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

"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."

“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”

“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 . . ."

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

"She is nuttier than squirrel poo."

“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.”

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

"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-"

"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."

"Your hair wants cutting"

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

“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!”

“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.”

"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."

“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.”

“If you see kay

Tell him he may

See you in tea

Tell him from me.”

"Rumour had it that he was homosexual; in reality, in recent years, he was simply a garden-variety alcoholic."

"If looks could kill, you'd soon find out that yours couldn't."

"He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.

"As if happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, guttural verbs, and the word 'postmodernist'."

“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.”

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

"That is such crap. How dare you be so fraudulently flirtatious, cowardly and dysfunctional? I am not interested in emotional f***wittage. Goodbye."

"What a pair of frauds."

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

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

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