Quotes & Sayings About People's 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

People say 'Poor guy.' That insults me. I despise sympathy. So I screwed up. I made some mistakes. 'Poor guy,' like I'm some victim. There's nothing poor about me. — Mike Tyson

They were representative of the poorer type of clerk - the type which Woodbines its fingers to a brilliant orange; the type that screams insults at a football referee on Saturday afternoon. And yet to the close observer something more might be read on their faces: a greedy, hungry look, a shifty untrustworthy look - the look of those who are jealous of everyone better placed than themselves, but who are incapable of trying to better their own position except by the relative method of dragging back their more fortunate acquaintances; the look of little men dissatisfied not so much with their own littleness as with the bigness of other people. — Sapper

I couldn't blame him for not believing me because it wasn't exactly true. The truth is that you /do/ care. Of course you do. And it hurts to hear people say those things about you. But the hurt changes, over time. At first, it's sharp and hot, like a fiery dagger stabbing you in the heart, but when you've heard the same insults over and over and over, the pain changes. It becomes a dull, throbbing ache -- like a toothache. A sort of background pain that you can ignore for a few minutes at a time, except when you're lying in bed at night, trying to sleep. That's when it really gets to you. — Cat Clarke

No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror. — Paul Bowles

Both the suicidal and non-suicidal are often angry with others. One way to discharge this anger is to fantasize about violent revenge. The insults of daily life often cause fantasies of revenge to flare up and quickly subside. The people with these fantasies usually do not act on them; they are not motives or goals. They are involuntary responses to perceived insult - ways of coping with rage. The suicidal, whether or not they attempt, suffer tremendous and persistent pain and anger. That this pain should find its way into their fantasies and dreams is no surprise. This ideation is not a motive for action; it is an alternative to action. Fantasizing about suicide is an effort to delay or avoid suicide, not the activity of formulating a motive, goal, or intention. Fantasies doubtlessly succeed in preventing many attempts. — David L. Conroy

Her hair is ridiculous," I said.
"I know. That was the only thing I said about her that was true. When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes. — John Green

When people direct insults at me, I can take it. — Eli Roth

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

I say 'Merry Christmas' to people I don't know, or to people I know are Christians. I say 'Happy Hanukkah' to people I know to be or suspect to be Jewish. And I don't say 'Happy Kwanzaa,' because I think African Americans get enough insults all year round. — Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes I have wished my insults were slaps or lashes; I've wanted to hit people in the face and make them see, if only for a day, what I see each day I help people. — Evita Peron

Kerry was walking with Jesus now. I could see my mom getting red when he said that, and I started to get a little worried that she might say something. We went to church sometimes, so it's not like Mom had anything against religion, but Kerry totally did and Mom was ferociously protective of the people she loved, so much that she took insults upon them personally. Her friends sometimes called her Mama Bear for this reason. — Gayle Forman

It is our emptiness and lowliness that God needs and not our plenitude. These are a few of the ways we can practice humility:
Speak as little as possible of oneself.
Mind one's own business.
Avoid curiosity.
Do not want to manage other people's affairs.
Accept contradiction and correction cheerfully.
Pass over the mistakes of others.
Accept blame when innocent.
Yield to the will of others.
Accept insults and injuries.
Accept being slighted, forgotten, and disliked.
Be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Do not seek to be specially loved and admired.
Never stand on one's dignity.
Yield in discussion even when one is right.
Choose always the hardest. — Mother Teresa

Some smart folk wish to love Jesus, but prefer to ignore his bride, the Church. This goes no better for these rude people than it does when any loving husband meets a boor who condescends, ignores, or insults his beloved. — Holly Ordway

Of course innocent mistakes occur but the accumulated insults and indignations caused by racial presumptions are destructive in ways that are hard to measure. Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden born by people of color that can't be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice. — Bryan Stevenson

I don't want any more insults. I'd like to experience three whole minutes in your presence before you lay into me again ... and we really should make sure the tools are all locked up. (Acheron)
(He pulled the sleeve of his jacket back to look at his watch.)
Let me start timing ... (Acheron)
(She opened her mouth to respond, but he held his hand up.)
Wait for it. We got two minutes and fifty-give seconds to go. (Acheron)
I'm not that bad. (Tory)
Yeah ... you're not standing in my shoes. (Acheron)
And judging by the ungodly size of them, I don't think there are many people who could. (Tory)
We almost made it to thirty seconds without an insult. I think we just set a new record. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I saw these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love; then there were the women who were drawn to him, suffering insults and beatings, finally rejected and yet still clinging to him, degraded by jealousy and despised love, but still remaining faithful. — Hermann Hesse

How is it then that your theologians drivel like people in their second childhood. — Martin Luther

Facts count. Conspiracy theories, usually the refuge of the bitter or disempowered, range from factually challenged to wildly hallucinogenic. Many conspiracy theories do both overt and tacit harm. Almost all are insults, intended or unintended, are insults to thousands of hard-working and honest people, and sometimes to entire races, nations, or cultures. — K. Lee Lerner

I'm proud of the fact that Marine Le Pen in France insults me and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands calls me his opponent. The way I see it is, if these people weren't attacking me, I would be doing something wrong. — Martin Schulz

To notice people's deceptions yet not reveal it in words, to bear people's insults without showing any change of attitude-there is endless meaning in this, and also endless function. — Zicheng Hong

There's no reason to trade insults. We have our way of life and they have theirs. I wouldn't live as they do, but disrespect seems pointless. I'm sure there are good people among them. — Alexei Panshin

I'm going to show you a technology today which takes insults and criticisms out of the airwaves. (Marshall puts on giraffe ears) With this technology, it will be impossible for you to hear criticisms, harsh remarks, or insults. All you can hear is what all people are ever saying, "please" and "thank you". What used to sound like criticism, judgment, or blame, you will see, are really tragic, suicidal expressions of "please". — Marshall B. Rosenberg

We care about you."

Books snorted. "You, I believe do. The others, less so."

"Maldynado would be bored if he didn't have you to trade insults with."

"I see. And Sicarius?"

"Ah, he believes you're progressing with your training."

"And that's equivalent to caring about me?" Books asked.

"Most people he ignores. Or kills."

"True. — Lindsay Buroker

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. — Walt Whitman

I try not to be angry, bitter at the unfairness of it all. I wish I could make sense of it. I once met an ex-Iranian pilot who was traveling through Canada looking for a place to settle down. He said that Americans are the only people he's ever met who just can't accept that bad things can happen to good people. Maybe he's right. Last week I was listening to the radio and just happened to hear [name withheld for legal reasons]. He was doing his usual thing - fart jokes and insults and adolescent sexuality - and I remember thinking, "This man survived and my parents didn't." No, I try not to be bitter. — Max Brooks

Before we ever finished shooting, there were things going on. For instance we always had different fingers exposed in our gloves, and always latex and black. And that Versace collection that hit the runway in the spring, we went, "Oh my gosh!" and then they came out and said it was "Tron" inspired. I love it! To me, there are no insults in that whatsoever. I love that other people are inspired by the movie. — Christine Bieselin Clark

Chinese people are indignant. Indignant! For decades, despite everything, they tried to make peace with the West. They are in fact the most peaceful big nation on Earth and what do they get in return? They get insults, provocations and intimidation. — Andre Vltchek

I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm more likely to pay attention to your thought about my work. If, on the other hand, you're not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I'm not at all interested in your commentary. — Brene Brown

There are many people, many worlds who believe in supernaturalism in one form or another ... religion, if you like the word better. We may disagree with them in one way or another, but we are as likely to be wrong in our disbelief as they in their belief. In any case, there is no disgrace in such belief and my questions were not intended as insults. — Isaac Asimov

I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. — Wilkie Collins

Look at our fathers in the old days, living masterpieces as they are and shining examples of true religion; and see how feeble our own achievement is, almost nothing. Heaven help us, what is our life in comparison with theirs? Holy people these, true friends of Christ, that could go hungry and thirsty in God's service; cold and ill-clad, worn out with labors and vigils and fasting, with praying and meditating on holy things, with all the persecutions and insults they endured. — Thomas A Kempis

Too right things could be better, that's my whole point. My going to work for the badge will not change that, will it?" Joanna said, "And Pride? There is absolutely no pride in being used and cast aside every twelve-weeks for someone equally replaceable. Do you see pride on the faces of people on Workplace? I don't. I see worry, I see weariness, I see downcast men and women, shuffling to and from work, ridiculed at the shops when their badge has ran out, shouted down in the streets with insults like 'badger' and 'scum' for simply doing all they can to survive. Pride, I don't see that, and you know what else I never see? Any fucking hope. — Paul Howsley

No one seems to have learned, or can remember, the magic words that calm people when they are frightened or threatened: "I'm sorry; I didn't see you; are you all right?" The inability to speak these words, I observe, goes right along with a propensity for mindless insults. — Carol Tavris

Recognizing sexism is harder than it once was. Like the micro-aggressions that people of color endure daily - racism masked as subtle insults or dismissals - today's sexism is insidious, casual, politically correct, even friendly. It — Jessica Bennett

I'll be certain to feel superior as they hurl insults and rocks in my direction."
"I thought southern people were supposed to be warm and welcoming."
"Only to your face. — Andrea Laurence

When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point in debating. You disengage yourself as quickly as possible from the situation. — Judith Martin

The true Church has never sounded out public expectations before launching her mission. Her leaders heard from God, they knew their Lord's will and did it. Their people followed them - sometimes to triumph, oftener to insults and public persecution - and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world! — Aiden Wilson Tozer

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
Argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people ...
Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
Dismiss what insults your very soul,
And your flesh shall become a great poem. — Walt Whitman

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. — Oscar Wilde

There is a way of reacting to insult that gives people the impression that you want more. I don't know what it is, but I seem to have mastered it. — Joyce Rachelle

We are fighting so that insults may no longer rule our countries, martyred and scorned for centuries, so that our peoples may never more be exploited by imperialists not only by people with white skin, because we do not confuse exploitation or exploiters with the colour of men's skins; we do not want any exploitation in our countries, not even by black people. — Amilcar Cabral

If you want to dance on a bar top, some of us will fall off the bar top. Some people will die as a result of liberalising bar top dancing ... a young girl with a short skirt dancing on it may attract some insults from some other men, the boyfriend will start fighting and some people will die. — Vivian Balakrishnan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People throw insults at you, and sometimes they hit a nerve - and it's about not showing that, because they will pick on that. Don't feed the trolls! — Maisie Williams

There's a strange uniformity in the vocabulary European soccer fans use to hate black people. The same primate insults get hurled. Although they've gotten better over time, the English and Italians developed the tradition of making ape noises when black players touched the ball. The Poles toss bananas on the field. This consistency owes nothing to television, which rarely shows these finer points of fan behavior. Nor are these insults considered polite to discuss in public. This trope has simply become a continent-wide folk tradition, transmitted via the stadium, from fan to fan, from father to son. — Franklin Foer

It really doesn't matter, are you fat or thin, large or small or whatever horrible and ungly and so on and so on..., to don't go so in details because from reading this your day becomes with more insults, my purpose is not to insult you, but to show you the path!
I know one all people can be clever if they want to be. — Deyth Banger

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party ...
As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. — Chuck Palahniuk

Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me; it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms. — Judith Martin

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

The times might be unpleasant, repulsive.
The ghastly chaos, the abhorrent uncivility might be intolerable, might force us into argument or leave us panic-stricken.
On such occasions people build within themselves a conviction, that the world outside is diabolical.
The whimsical insults test our level of endurance causing us to plead for mercy, wanting us to be pitied than exploited and victimized.
Often this grief and shame form a delusion within us that there no longer exists good in this world, that good people are fictitious and that goodness has lost its definition altogether.
But such is not true because there are still people who are virtuous, unselfish, willing to help and possessing the ability of restoring our faith in humanity, to disregard them, their presence would be as heinous as the deeds of the people who are unlike them.
The times might be unpleasant, repulsive but we'll come out it, unharmed and liberated. — Chirag Tulsiani

Oh, this beast? It's ... perspicacious loris. 'Perspicacious' meaning 'wise or canny'."
"Get stuffed," Bovril said, then giggled.
"And it insults people," Telsa said. "How peculiar. — Scott Westerfeld

Epictetus explained what becoming a Cynic would entail: "You must utterly put away the will to get, and must will to avoid only what lies within the sphere of your will: you must harbour no anger, wrath, envy, pity: a fair maid, a fair name, favourites, or sweet cakes, must mean nothing to you." A Cynic, he explained, "must have the spirit of patience in such measure as to seem to the multitude as unfeeling as a stone. Reviling or blows or insults are nothing to him."2 Few people, one imagines, had the courage and endurance to live the life of a Cynic. The — William B. Irvine

And I know what people say about not listening to insults or how you should let stuff roll off you, but it's not that easy. — Elizabeth Scott

If you're insulting people on the internet, you must be ugly on the inside. — Phil Lester

These are the few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one's self.
To mind one's own business.
Not to want to manage other people's affairs.
To avoid curiosity.
To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.
To pass over the mistakes of others.
To accept insults and injuries.
To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Never to stand on one's dignity.
To choose always the hardest. — Mother Teresa

And those people like my grandmother, who are so free with their insults and their slaps, who say that it is a tremendous honor and a fine step up for a ninny like me, might well consider that a fool can be jumped up, but a fool can also be thrown down; and who is going to catch me then? — Philippa Gregory

I'm accustomed to Internet forums where rudeness and incivility are the rule, where too many people seem to take pride in their insults. — Bryan Burrough

Its crazy when people of high moral standards, feel its okay for an intimate friend to insult them in a jovial way, forgeting that even casual friends can do just the same in a jovial way. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Another lesson to file away about Scotland: insulting other people in a childish manner was the national pastime. — Molly Ringle

If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you. — Bill Russell

We went to church sometimes, so it's not like Mom had anything against religion, but Kerry totally did and Mom was ferociously protective of the people she loved, so much that she took insults up them personally. — Gayle Forman

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

The process of having fruitful crops depends on being crushed under the soil, becoming soil, and being no one; only then a second existence becomes possible. So whatever status one has in society, true wisdom requires one to see oneself this way. Individuals with such considerations are already prepared for self-effacement and will therefore not lose in the face of even the hardest tests by God's grace. Such people do not feel dizzy before victories, and do not give up in the face of pressures, attacks, and insults, because a man who sees himself as a seed under the soil does not mind others walking on him. — M. Fethullah Gulen

It is how decent, civilized people behave, Captain Ransom. Though I suppose that to someone of your level of moral fortitude, it must seem remarkable. — Jim Butcher

In Christianity, God has promised to avenge attacks against His people. We trust the One who said, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay" (Romans 12:19 KJV) - but to the Muslim mind, this makes us look like cowards. In Islam, it's the opposite: the people are commanded to punish insults to the honor of Allah and Muhammad. — Michael Youssef