Quotes & Sayings About Insults

Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don't like kiss-asses and that you'd rather work with people challenging your perceptions. — Mario Stinger

You don't stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sin. You can't beat the devil without becoming like him. You can't appeal to his kindness, so you have to learn to play his games. You lie, you fuck, you manipulate, you fight, you hurl insults, until you do whatever it takes to win the battle. Every time you do those things, you understand him a little more. Until finally, he becomes your ally. You think you've won, that you've made him more like you. But the truth is, it's the other way around. So that even when you win, you've lost. — Nina G. Jones

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to. — Janet Fitch

I look like a hooker."
"A slut," I corrected. "Hookers have pastier complexions."
"The voice of experience, I'm sure. — Martyn V. Halm

Kids not only understand [a dark story] but appreciate it ... Because in the real world there's fear, and dark things happen no matter how young you are. People lose parents, people lose friends ... There's darkness in the world. So I think when kids are talked to in that way, they appreciate it. They're not being given some candy-coated, 'Oh, this is a world where there are no stakes.' I think that actually insults their intelligence. — America Ferrera

One will become shameless if he does not fear insults in the worldly life. And in nischay [determination in the spiritual life] if one does not fear being insulted, he becomes independent. — Dada Bhagwan

To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults. — Theodor Adorno

How can you tell whether the ego is there or not? You will know when someone insults you. If someone insults you, swallow (accept) it with understanding. — Dada Bhagwan

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune. — Henry Fielding

I don't like yelling insults at someone who's never done anything to me. — Gillian Jacobs

Criticism and rejection are not personal insults, but your artistic component will not know that. It will quiver and wince and run to cover, and you will have trouble in luring it out again to observe and weave tales and find words for all the thousand shades of feeling that go to make up a story. — Dorothea Brande

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house. — Gore Vidal

It's hard to make out the difference between insults and bad advice. — Cass McCombs

If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off. — Kurt Vonnegut

When I understood that neither parents, nor family, nor friends, nor anyone in the world could offer me anything but pain, insults and wounds, I resolved to stop living for the world. — Thaddeus Of Vitovnica

To call a man without the Holy Spirit "upright and God-fearing" is the same as calling Belial "Christ". — Martin Luther

The nights you fight best
are
when all the weapons are pointed
at you,
when all the voices
hurl their insults
while the dream is being
strangled.
the nights you fight best
are
when the game is
fixed,
when the crowd screams
for your
blood. — Charles Bukowski

Erik choked back the insult he'd been on the verge of uttering. Judging by his expression, it was viler than a castor-oil purgative. — Juan Filloy

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. — Jonah Goldberg

I don't mind personal insults, but when you insult the jokes that I tell you're insulting Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Trevor McGee and Molly Picon. — Milton Berle

As politicians we have to make very difficult decisions and one ... is when freedom of speech actually insults public safety. — Tulip Siddiq

Hey! Guy with scary eyes?" Madison called out. "You know what a moose does when someone insults her family?"
Ivan raised his eyebrows.
"She does this." Madison crouched down and charged Ivan. Her head hit him in the stomach. — Rick Riordan

Right before the game, she strolled up to me. "Hey, Seaweed Brain."
"Will you stop calling me that?"
She knows I hate that name, mostly because I never have a good comeback. She's the daughter of Athena, which doesn't give me a lot of ammunition. I mean, "Owl-head" and "Wise Girl" are kind of lame insults. — Rick Riordan

The noise of horns and radios and shouted insults was part of the soundtrack of the capital (Hard-boiled P.I. Casta, on Rome, Italy) — Tobias Jones

An idiot child screaming in a hospital." (on George Bernard Shaw) — H.G.Wells

I think a lot of TV insults the audience. — Bernie Mac

He who does not take insults seriously, is on the path to wisdom. — Paulo Coelho

Each of us carries within himself a collection of instant insults. — Haim Ginott

Now she sat in front of him, nearly submerged under layers of thick sweaters and blankets. She looked like a laundry hamper without a head. — Louise Penny

We both want you dead. I'm bringing the friendship bracelets to the next meeting. — Nenia Campbell

There will be no insults here," Lachlan said to Ewan, his voice stern. "At least not against Sin. Braden, on the other hand, you may feel free to attack." "Och, now," Braden bristled, "where's your brotherly love?" Lochlan smiled devilishly. "That is my brotherly love. Notice I have yet to taunt you?" "Aye, but I'm sure it's nothing more than an oversight."
-Lochlan & Braden — Kinley MacGregor

You unfailingly omnibothersome bitch. — Scott Lynch

Not only a fanatic and an incendiary (two of the insults that dogged Defoe most closely in his lifetime), the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an egregious spiv, and a slave to bling. — Daniel Defoe

My beloved boat is broken on the rocks of daily life. I've paid my debts and no longer need to count pains I've suffered at the hands of others. The misfortunes and the insults. Good luck to those who remain. — Jennifer Niven

You're not interesting in the least," she spat. "I don't need to be," I smiled. "That's what you need ... And you're welcome to it. — Donna Lynn Hope

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
(on Ernest Hemingway — William Faulkner

Is a series of promises." When she'd realized that - marriage equaled promises - she hadn't feared it. As much. "Maybe you can't keep them all. The whole till-death-do-us-part business. Maybe you can't keep that one. Life can be long, and people change, circumstances change, so okay. You realize you don't really want this life or this person, or the person you made the promises to isn't who you thought, or they've changed in a way you can't accept or support. Whatever. You make a choice. Stick and try to work it through, or don't. But don't give me the boo-hoo, I'm not happy so I'm getting naked with somebody else on the side. It insults everybody. — J.D. Robb

He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, You are an untidy person. — Jim Butcher

What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his Prophet. — Mohammed Bouyeri

You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else. — Andre Gide

Schellenberg had the habit of calling people he didn't like whores, and this term suited him well - and when I think about it, it's true that the insults people prefer, the ones that come most spontaneously to their lips, often in the end reveal their own hidden faults, since they naturally hate what they most resemble. — Jonathan Littell

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

These words of yours, devoid of Christ, devoid of Spirit, are colder than ice itself, so that they tarnish the beauty of your eloquence. Perhaps they were dragged out of you, poor fellow, by fear of the pontiffs and tyrants, lest you should seem altogether an atheist! — Martin Luther

When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger or insults. Your enemy is apathy. — Gil Penchina

It is one thing to die. It is another thing for an innocent person to die for a guilty one. It is something much more that Jesus would take on himself all the curses the world deserved in concentrated form. This meant that his relationship with his Father, the one thing that had sustained him throughout all the previous insults and rejection, was about to be removed. Moses knew he could not lead the people through the wilderness unless God was present. Without his Father's grace and mercy, Jesus had to wonder if he would be able to take one more step, let alone make it all the way to the cross. So he prayed. The result was that he was strengthened. His mission came into full view (John 18:11), and he was able to see the divine plan to the end. From that point on, the gospel accounts communicate two unmistakable points. They press these points until we are undone by them: Jesus experienced incomparable shame, and he experienced it at the hands of everyone. — Edward T. Welch

If "atheophobia" denotes the violent criticism of atheism, I invite my Bible-thumping friends to sign up without fear for their safety. Don't reserve your insults to Reason for the privacy of those tombs of thought you call temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques! Publish newspapers and blogs, stage plays and puppet shows, to mock what you see as the absurdity of life without God, of life without your Supreme Blankie! — Charb

Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger - all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him. — Mario Puzo

Violet stayed still as a statue. She hadn't been listening to the last speech of Count Olaf's, knowing it would be full of the usual self-congratulatory nonsense and despicable insults. — Lemony Snicket

First of all, simply clawing or breathing at somedragon once isn't real fighting. Small people usually use words for what we mean by that. They might say, oh, "Your mother copulated extramaritally with a black poodle, and from this union you were born." Dragons just attack, once, instead. It's just as expressive. — Bard Bloom

The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into pardon. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The distortions and insults about organized religion will continue unabated as long as our popular culture continues its overall campaign against judgment and values. A war against standards leads logically and inevitably to hostility to religion because it is religious faith that provides the ultimate basis for all standards. — Michael Medved

Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for. — Paula Stokes

The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek. — Mario Puzo

I have a chest full of all the insults, villainies, and infamies a man is capable of withstanding ... If you become famous, you will have to go through that. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Where there seems to be a difference between guys being nuts and women being nuts is that guys are much more open in calling each other on stuff; lots of insults and dirty names. Whereas women will talk frankly and honesty, but there also seems to be more passive aggressiveness. — Paul Feig

Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men. This observation insults Amelia because it implies that she only reads books with classically romantic heroes. She does not mind the occasional novel with a romantic hero but her reading taste are far more varied than that. Furthermore, she adores Humbert Humbert as a character while accepting the fact that she wouldn't really want him for a life partner, a boyfriend, or even a casual acquaintance. She feels the same way about Holden Caulfield, and Misters Rochester and Darcy. — Gabrielle Zevin

[A] truly humble spirit humbles itself as much amid honors as amid insults, acting like the honeybee which makes its honey equally as well from the dew that falls on the wormwood as from that which falls on the rose. — Vincent De Paul

I love it when someone insults me. That means that I don't have to be nice anymore. — Billy Idol

[As part of Camus' refusal to debate his political enemies publicly after their vitriolic responses to the publication of 'The Rebel'] At this point, the least sentence I might say will be used in a way that disgusts me in advance ... It would be impossible for me in that case to continue expressing myself with academic politeness. I am mistaken for a deliberately polite man whom one may insult in all safety. — Olivier Todd

What stronger denunciation of an agrarian society than the charge of bestiality? Even in modern times, when Basque peasants engage in the duel by insults known as xikito, the accusation of bestiality remains a classic attack. And though to most people, sex with a goat would seem sufficiently perverted, it was not even conceded that they had conventional goat sex. It was group sex, and the goat sometimes used an artificial phallus, with the intercourse sometimes vaginal and sometimes anal. According to some accounts, the goat would lift his tail so the women could kiss his posterior while he broke wind. The — Mark Kurlansky

He had to clear his throat before he could say, "You know, I always thought it would be cool to have a kid sister."
"Be careful what you wish for." Adne looked up at him and grinned. "I'm kind of a brat."
Ren laughed.
I couldn't help myself. "She's not kidding."
"Thanks, Lily." Adne glared at me, but she was laughing too. "What do you say we continue trading insults where we're less likely to be in mortal peril?"
"She calls you Lily?" Ren was gazing at her, astonished.
I groaned. "She does."
"Great minds." He flashed a wicked smile at me before winking at her. — Andrea Cremer

All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres. — Marguerite Yourcenar

We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled. — Mason Cooley

Oh, shut up your little pussymouth, you mongoloid. — John Kennedy Toole

If a shred of integrity fell into your soul, it would die a very lonely death. — Jasper Fforde

Reexamine all that you have been told in school, or in church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul. — Walt Wyman

[Chucky] Ya peanut headed suckerfool!
Take me on!
Ya ugly knuckle butted dogface underpants!
You think I'm playin'? — Lynda Barry

The only time you seem honest is when you're insulting someone!"
"The only honest things I can say to you are insults. — Brandon Sanderson

Women receive he insults of men with tolerance, having been bitten in the nipple by their toothless gums. — Dilys Laing

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes, questions are more hurtful than insults. — Mitch Albom

You can never be annoyed by anyone when you are just alone, insults comes from being too familiar even with the most respectful persons. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Great thieves go Scott-free, as the Pope and his crew. — Martin Luther

It's a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned, reflective judgment. Suprisingly often, discussions degenerate into acrimony, insults and flames. — Clifford Stoll

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

If you ever try to change my memories again, I will slap you into next spring." I took a breath, knees shaking as I felt small beside him, my white dress brushing against his black trousers. Some women get flowers or poems from their suitors. I get insults and threats. — Dawn Cook

I'm looking for laughs, you know? If it take me to flip over a table, if I have to go physical comedy, I will do it. But whatever the joke needs at that particular time, is where I'm dedicated to. I'm not into beating somebody down and beating myself up. I don't do insults and things like that. I don't do it - I'm a storyteller. — Bernie Mac

I'm dying and all I hear are insults! — Charles M. Schulz

I didn't respond well to a firm hand and insults. — Terry Bradshaw

Insults are the business of the court. — Naguib Mahfouz

you cannot understand a thing, you begin to abuse it because it insults you. You cannot understand it! You? YOU cannot understand it? That is impossible. Something must be wrong with the thing itself. One begins to abuse, one begins to talk nonsense, and then he feels, "Now it is okay. — Osho

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence. — Jasper Fforde

Some virtuous women are too liberal in their insults to a frail sister; but virtue can support itself without borrowing any assistance from the vices of other women. — Henry Fielding

Be strong and kill yourself with the sword of hate and love, then you will not hear the insults and abuse which the enemies of the Church throw at you. Your eyes will not see anything which seems impossible, or the sufferings which may follow, but only the light of faith, and in that light everything is possible; and remember God never lays greater burdens on us than we can bear. — Catherine Of Siena

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Your pride will be uprooted when a person who insults you appears to be your benefactor. The person who insults should be considered a benefactor, instead people get depressed when they are insulted. — Dada Bhagwan

Her ravings were so crowded with recriminations and insults and petitions, with weeping and caterwauling and wild expressions of love, that it seemed bewildering to Bob and Charley that Jesse remained there for minutes, let alone hours; yet he did. She was four inches taller than Jesse, a giant of a woman, but she made him seem even smaller, made him seem stooped and spiritless. She made him kiss her on the mouth like a lover and rub her neck and temples with myrtleberry oil as he avowed his affection for her and confessed his frailties and shortcomings. — Ron Hansen

We are usually angered when someone insults us, until Divine Grace comes upon us. When we receive Grace, we no longer feel hurt when others insult us but remain quiet and peaceful, as though the insult was not directed at us at all. — Thaddeus Of Vitovnica

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. — Mary Schmich

But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than glorious. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The portrait painter ... If he insults his sitters his occupation is gone. Whether he paints the should instead of the features, or the latter with all its natural blemishes, he is as presumptuous as if he shouted, 'What a face. Hide it.' which would never do, although it is analogous to what landscape painters are doing every day. — Walter J. Phillips

The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Kiwi thought back to his first weeks, when insults had been impossible for him. One time he'd called Deemer a troglodyte but his delivery had been tentative and way, way too slow, as if the insult were a fork tenderly entering a steak. — Karen Russell

She's probably right on both counts, but there's something dark in her eyes. It's the same shadow I see whenever she stops me. "You're worth fighting for."
"I'm not." The way she answers too fast with too much conviction twists my insides. When the three men who should be taking bullets for her stand by and let insults be thrown at her, how can I convince her otherwise? — Katie McGarry

Hypothesis: Brothers and sisters forge family bonds through a complex byplay of accusations and insults. — Gordon Korman

Never agree with a man who insults you. — Suzanne Rindell

Self-righteousness exclaims, "I will not be saved in God's way; I will make a new road to heaven; I will not bow before God's grace; I will not accept the atonement which God has wrought out in the person of Jesus; I will be my own redeemer; I will enter heaven by my own strength, and glorify my own merits." The Lord is very wroth against self-righteousness. I do not know of anything against which His fury burneth more than against this, because this touches Him in a very tender point, it insults the glory and honor of His Son Jesus Christ. — Charles Spurgeon

Rough work with a soul will always be open to all, including condemnation & reviling, while fine work housing emptiness is closed to all insults & is easily ivied over with paid praises — Richard Flanagan

An enemy sees his attackers laughing? It is better than all the insults. A man who laughs as he goes into battle is a man who has confidence, and a man with confidence is terrifying to an enemy. "For the whore!" I shouted. — Bernard Cornwell