She looks like she combs her hair with an egg beater.
- Critic Louella Parsons on Joan Collins

Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.
- P. G. Wodehouse

I think it would be a very good idea.
- Mahatma Ghandi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure.
- Jack E. Leonard

Another victory like that and we are done for.
- Pyrrhus

The idea of Prince Charles conversing with vegetables is not quite so amusing when you remember that he's had plenty of practice chatting to members of his own family.
- Jaci Stephens

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.
- Andrew Lang

I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland.
- Eugene McCarthy

I married beneath me. All women do.
- Lady Nancy Astor

In a mere half century films have gone from silent to unspeakable.
- Doug Larson

Awards are like hemorrhoids; sooner or later every asshole gets one.
- Frederic Raphael

I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down these thoughts, otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me.
- Noel Coward on Edith Sitwell

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
- Oscar Wilde

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
- Johann von Goethe

I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.
- Mark Twain

Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
- Desmond Morris

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
- Mark Russell

Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee later than others.
- Kin Hubbard

The terrifying power of the human sex drive is horrifically demonstrated by the fact that someone was willing to father you.
- Ipso Fatso

Sir, you pride yourself on an ability in which any ignorant barbarian is your equal and any jackass immeasurably your superior.
- John Randolph

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
- William Dean Howells

Stay with me, I want to be alone.
- Joey Adams

I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.
- Johnny Frank Garrett, Sr., executed by injection, Texas

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
- Catherine Aird

Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.
- Heinrich Heine

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
- Thomas Brackett Reed

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
- Groucho Marx

What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement.
- Fred Allen

Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog.
- Harold Wilson

If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn't be surprised.
- Dorothy Parker

All the great economic ills the world has faced this century can be directly traced back to the London School of Economics.
- NM Perrera

I used to keep my college room mate from reading my personal mail by hiding it in her textbooks.
- Joan Welsh

Sociology is the study of people who do not need to be studied by people who do.
- ES Turner

His ignorance is encyclopedic.
- Abba Eban

It's great to be with Bill Buckley because you don't have to think. He takes a position and you automatically take the opposite and you know you are right.
- J.K.Galbraith

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
- Abraham Lincoln

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
- Groucho Marx

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
- George Bernard Shaw

You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not have been naturally so stupid.
- Samuel Johnson

You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
- Edward Flaherty

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
- Alexander Pope

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
- Samuel Butler

I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?
- Ashleigh Brilliant

He's as big as a gorilla and as strong as a gorilla. If he was as smart as a gorilla he'd be fine.
- Sam Bailey

When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?
- David Letterman

Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.
- Zenna Schaffer

There are three stages of man: He believes in Santa Claus; he doesn't believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
- Bob Philips

An extravagance is anything you buy that is of no earthly use to your wife.
- Franklin Adams

It doesn't make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
- Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I've had them both, and I don't think much of either.
- Beatrix Lehmann, watching a Hollywood wedding

In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.
- Charles, Count Talleyrand

She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
- Robertson Davies

There goes the famous good time that was had by all.
- Bette Davis

She should get a divorce and settle down.
- Jack Parr

That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
- Dorothy Parker

Wild horses couldn't drag a secret out of most women. However, women seldom have lunch with wild horses.
- Ivern Boyett

Where would man be today if it wasn't for women? In the Garden of Eden eating water melon and taking it easy.
- C Kennedy

Women should be obscene and not heard.
- Groucho Marx.

Damn it, sir, it is your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.
- Oscar Wilde

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.
- Helen Roland

Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffer-ring.
- Emo Phillips

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home, which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.
- Marie Corelli

My wife has a slight speech impediment. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
- Jack Durante

The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.
- Woody Allen

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
- Rita Rudner

I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't.
- Patrick Murray

Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
- Lewis Grizzard

He was so narrow minded, he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
- Molly Ivins

Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?
- Groucho Marx

She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers.
- Alexander Woollcott

He was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
- William Faulkner

He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.
- Paul Keating

Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
- Oscar Levant

Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
- Groucho Marx

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
- Oscar Wilde

I worship the quicksand he walks in.
- Art Buchwald

He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.
- Henry James

I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.
- Irvin S. Cobb

You had to stand in line to hate him.
- Hedda Hopper

He's the only guy I know whom Dale Carnegie would hit in the mouth.
- Bill Veeck

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
- Oscar Wilde

She never was really charming till she died.
- Terence

The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
- Fred Allen

There but for the grace of God, goes God.
- Winston Churchill

You can always tell when he's lying - his lips move.
- Frankie Howard on Richard M. Nixon

Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
- Harry S. Truman on Richard Nixon

He's completely unspoiled by failure.
- Noel Coward

She's descended from a long line her mother listened to.
- Gypsy Rose Lee

I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.
- Irving Brecher

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.
- Ellen DeGeneris

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
- Samuel Johnson

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
- Douglas Adams

I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
- Aneurin Bevan

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
- Groucho Marx

He ended the job as he began it; fired with enthusiasm.
- Don O'Shaughnessy

Statistics indicate that as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the nation's golf courses.
- Ira Wallach

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
- George Bernard Shaw

As with mosquitoes, horseflies, and most bloodsucking parasites, Kenneth Starr was spawned in stagnant water.
- James Carville

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
- Gore Vidal

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Tom Lehrer

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
- Paul Valery

Americans have different ways of saying things; they say "elevator", we say "lift"; they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git."
- Alexai Sayle

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.
- Aneurin Bevan, on Harold Macmillan

A nonentity with side whiskers.
- Woodrow Wilson, on Chester A. Arthur

I must remind the right honorable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.
- Clement Atlee, on Winston Churchill

An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Atlee got out.
- Winston Churchill, on Clement Atlee

One could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air.
- George Orwell, on Stanley Baldwin

He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill, on Stanley Baldwin

We make fun of George W. Bush, but this morning he was at work bright and early. Okay, he was early.
- Jay Leno

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter, if he'd run unopposed he would have lost.
- Mort Sahl

It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it.
- Winston Churchill

He looks as though he's been weaned on a pickle.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth, on Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge didn't say much, and when he did he didn't say much.
- Will Rogers, on Calvin Coolidge

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
- Benjamin Disraeli, on William Gladstone

If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone pulled him out, it would be a calamity.
- Benjamin Disraeli, on William Gladstone

History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford, and Nixon-See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil.
- Robert J. Dole, speech, 1983

He is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
- Lyndon Baines, Johnson on Gerald Ford

He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.
- Lyndon Baines, Johnson on Gerald Ford

His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.
- William McAdoo, on Warren Harding

Any political party that can't cough up anything better than a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets. They don't hardly make 'em like Hubert any more - but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.
- Hunter S. Thompson, on Hubert Humphrey, 1973

An offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity.
- General McCellan, on Abraham Lincoln

Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
- Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan

A little emasculated mass of inanity.
- Theodore Roosevelt, on Henry James

A politician is a person who approaches every subject with an open mouth.
- Adlai Stevenson

The Prime Minister tells us she has given the French president a piece of her mind, not a gift I would receive with alacrity.
- Denis Healy

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.
- Oscar Wilde

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
- Moses Hadas

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
- Groucho Marx

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
- Jonathan Swift

The covers of this book are too far apart.
- Ambrose Bierce

This is not a book which should be put aside lightly, it should be tossed aside with great force.
- Dorothy Parker

I didn't like the play but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
- Groucho Marx

This book is both good and original, but the part that is original is not good and the part that is good, is not original.
- George Bernard Shaw

This is one of those big, fat paperbacks, intended to while away a monsoon or two, which, if thrown with a good over arm action, will bring a water buffalo to its knees.
- Nancy Banks-Smith on M.M. Kaye's "The Far Pavillions"

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
- A. E. Housman

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.
- Gene Fowler

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
- Robert Heinlein

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me.
- Max Reger in a letter to critic Rudolph Louis

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think that university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
- Flannery O'Connor

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
- Samuel Johnson

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."
- Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman

Sitting in a sewer and adding to it.
- Thomas Carlyle, on Algernon Charles Swinburne

A fat little flabby person, with the face of a baker, the clothes of a cobbler, the size of a barrel maker, the manners of a stocking salesman, and the dress of an innkeeper.
- Victor de Balabin, on Honor? de Balzac

If people don't sit at Chaplin's feet, he goes out and stands where they are sitting.
- Herman J. Mankiewicz, on Charlie Chaplin

A woman went to a plastic surgeon and asked him to make her like Bo Derek. He gave her a lobotomy.
- Joan Rivers

Glenda Jackson has a face to launch a thousand dredgers.
- Jack deManio

She has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age.
- Oscar Levant, on Zsa Zsa Gabor

Martin's acting is so inept that even his impersonation of a lush seems unconvincing.
- Harry Medved, on Dean Martin

I treasure every moment that I do not see her.
- Oscar Levant, on Phyllis Diller

She's so hairy - when she lifted up her arm I thought it was Tina Turner in her armpit.
- Joan Rivers, on Madonna

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
- Fred Allen

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
- Fred Allen

She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong.
- Mae West, on fellow film star, Jean Harlow

An Actor is someone whom, if you aren't talking about him, he isn't listening.
- Marlon Brando

Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.
- Henny Youngman

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite sameness.
- David Shipmanon, on Marlene Dietrich

He got a reputation as a great actor by just thinking hard about the next line.
- King Vidor, on Gary Cooper

Hah! I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy!
- Ava Gardner, on Mia Farrow's marriage to Frank Sinatra

Maybe it's the hair. Maybe it's the teeth. Maybe it's the intellect. No, it's the hair.
- Tom Shales, on Farrah Fawcett

He's the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.
- Mamie Van Doren on Warren Beatty

Who among us has not gazed thoughtfully and patiently at a painting of Jackson Pollock and thought "What a piece of crap?"
- Rob Long

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
- George Bernard Shaw

I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy as much as this.
- Ernest Newman, on Stravinsky's "Symphony of Wind Instruments" in memory of Debussy

When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in.
- Bob Hope, on Jack Benny

Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman.
- Molly Ivins

Michael Jackson's album was only called "Bad" because there wasn't enough room on the sleeve for "Pathetic."
- The Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Somebody should clip Sting around the head and tell him to stop using that ridiculous Jamaican accent.
- Elvis Costello, on Sting

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
- W. H. Auden, on Edgar Allan Poe

That's not writing, that's typing.
- Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac's style

Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde

Always willing to lend a hand to the one above him.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on Ernest Hemmingway

A freakish homunculus germinated outside of lawful procreation.
- Henry Arthur Jones, on George Bernard Shaw