Sunday, October 18, 2015 – Handling Insults
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. ~ Moliere
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want? ~ Mason Cooley
Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul. ~ Walt Whitman
I love it when someone insults me. That means that I don’t have to be nice anymore. ~ Billy Idol
It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting. ~ Epictetus
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out. ~ Raoul Vaneigem
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble. ~ Sinclair Lewis
A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults. ~ Louis Nizer
We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them. ~ Alexander McCall Smith
Young people soon give, and forget insults, but old age is slow in both. ~ Joseph Addison
Old age is an insult. It’s like being smacked. ~ Lawrence Durrell
By indignities men come to dignities. ~ Francis Bacon
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. ~ Sam Brown
Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it. ~ Descartes
Calumny is only the noise of madmen. ~ Diogenes of Sinope
No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute. ~ Paul Gallico
You will find that silence or very gentle words are the most exquisite revenge for insult. ~ Judge Hall
The way to procure insults is to submit to them: a man meets with no more respect than he exacts. ~ William Hazlitt
The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved. ~ Russell Lynes
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it. ~ Seneca
You are an idiot, a retard, and whatever else you just called me. ~ James Dye
It is easy to forgive an insult, but harder to forget one. ~ Michael Lipsey
Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress. ~ Judith Martin
Looking back at all the people I have insulted, I am mildly surprised that I am still allowed to exist. ~ Auberon Waugh
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. ~ Lord Chesterfield
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally. ~ Oscar Wilde
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me. ~ Frederick Douglass
A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. ~ G. K. Chesterton
One insult pocketed soon produces another. ~ Thomas Jefferson
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. ~ Sigmund Freud
I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely. ~ Josephine Baker
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure – that is all that agnosticism means. ~ Clarence Darrow
Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness. ~ Stephen Fry
To insult someone we call him “bestial.” For deliberate cruelty and nature, “human” might be the greater insult. ~ Isaac Asimov
There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. ~ John B. S. Haldane
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion. ~ Edmond de Goncourt
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer. ~ Charles de Secondat
Insult is powerful. Insult begets both rage and humor and often at the same time. ~ Suzanne Fields
The point of quotations is that one can use another’s words to be insulting. ~ Carolyn Gold Heilbrun
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon. ~ Johannes Brahms
People look at you, and they’ve got just the perfect little box for you, the perfect category. Call you a redneck. Call you a hillbilly. Like those were insults. ~ Travis Tritt
To say ‘we’ and mean ‘I’ is one of the most recondite insults. ~ Theodor Adorno
I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool. ~ Brigham Young
Just Above Sunset 