Insulting Others

Sunday, September 16, 2012 – Insulting Others

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