Retorts Quotes & Sayings

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno! — E. M. Forster

I have my sources." Somehow, saying I'd heard it from my mom sounded less cool. "You've decided, right? I mean, it sounds like a good deal, seeing as she's going to give you fringe benefits ... "
He gave me a level look. "What happens between her and me is none of your business," he replied crisply.
...
Dimitri arched an eyebrow, then jerked his head back where we'd come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?"
Several retorts popped into my head, and then a golden one took precedence. "What happens between him and me is none of your business." I managed a tone very similar to he one he'd used on me when making a similar comment about him and Tasha. — Richelle Mead

Twenty minutes 'til 9, we're getting in the truck. I'm sweaty,
stinky and covered in red mud. I'm not sure what Logan smells
like and I don't plan on getting close enough to find out.
"What do you wanna be when you grow up?" he asks, as we
ride along the quiet, foggy, gravel road in the dark.
"Alive," I say, thoughtlessly.
"I like that. Aim low," he retorts. — Elizabeth Nicole

The man followed me. "I will wipe that which is displeasing to God off the face of the earth!" he boomed. "The ground will soak up your blood!"
I had at least two smart retorts to these sinister words on the tip of my tongue. (Soak up my blood? Oh, come off it, this is tiled floor.) But I was in such a panic that I couldn't get a word out. The man didn't look as if he'd appreciate my little joke at this moment anyway. In fact, he didn't look as if he had a sense of humor at all.
I took another step back and came up against a wall. The killer laughed out loud. Okay, so maybe he did have a sense of humor, but it wasn't much like mine. — Kerstin Gier

Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People like him had these weird thick skins. You insult them to their face and it whistles past their ears. They take irony as compliments and barely even notice your wittiest retorts. When — Niels Saunders

Today, for the mass of humanity, science and technology embody 'miracle, mystery, and authority'. Science promises that the most ancient human fantasies will at last be realized. Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal. Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic. Time retorts to the illusions of humanism with the reality: frail, deranged, undelivered humanity. Even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war. — John N. Gray

Dimitri's voice snapped my attention back to him. "That's Adrian Ivashkov." He said the name the same way everyone else did.
"Yeah, I know."
"This is the second time I've seen you with him."
"Yeah," I replied glibly. "We hang out sometimes."
Dimitri arched an eyebrow, then jerked his head back toward where we'd come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?"
Several retorts popped into my head, and then a golden one took precedence. "What happens between him and me is none of your business." I managed a tone very similar to the one he'd used on me when making a similar comment about him and Tasha.
"Actually, as long as you're at the Academy, what you do is my business."
"Not my personal life. You don't have any say in that. — Richelle Mead

The thing of courage
As rous'd with rage doth sympathise,
And, with an accent tun'd in self-same key,
Retorts to chiding fortune. — William Shakespeare

If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Listen to the fleshbody," the dropwort retorts. "A mere seventeen turns of the seasons on this ancient earth of ours, and yet he dismisses us. — Maryrose Wood

He missed everything about her, from her hot temper to her sassy retorts to the way her breath always seemed to catch every time her came near her. He missed the music of her laugh, the gentle touch of her hand, the clean scent of apples that seemed to cling to her skin. He even missed the way she completely spoiled Cinder and had stolen the wolf's loyalty away from him. — Crista McHugh

'I'm not that easy to get rid of,' Andre retorts. 'As you know well. What state are you in? Besides confusion.' — Lynn Kelling

What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, Certainly not with our religion. — Luther Burbank

One side charges, 'You are decadent.' The other side retorts, 'We are free.' These are not opposing contentions; they're nonsequiturs. — Tamim Ansary

Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,
not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,
and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them. — Henry David Thoreau

One of the stall doors swings open and a fortyish-year-old woman walks out tucking her shirt into her jeans. Her heavy lined eyes land on Seth. "This is the women's restroom." She points a finger to the door. "Can't you read?"
"Can't you see that everyone in this club is about twenty years younger than you?" Seth retorts, turning to the mirror. With his pinkie, he messes with bangs. "Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to have some fun. — Jessica Sorensen

Outside the wind had picked up a little. Isaac sheltered his prize and walked quickly up the little alley that adjoined The Dying Child with Paddler Way and his workshop-home. He pushed open the green doors with his bum and backed into the building. Isaac's laboratory had been a factory and a warehouse years ago, and its huge, dusty floorspace swamped the little benches and retorts and blackboards that perched in its corners. — China Mieville

You have my word as a gentleman." [The other man remarks that he is not a gentleman and he retorts] "Then you have my word as a scoundrel, which, I know, opens up a rather confusing paradox that I have neither the time nor inclination to disentangle. — David Liss

If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said - unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. — Ann Coulter

Richard leans on his stick. He takes a deep breath and begins to speak. "What a fucked up night? We get this tip that some clown is moving in, I fly off the handle, and off some poor schmuck's wife and I shoot the bastard. To make matters worse, I chop his fucking arm off." Vincent takes a shot and retorts. "The whole scene was fucking Shakespearean. Comedy juxtaposed against a tragic backdrop. — Z.S. Kaplan

I think you can be tough and aggressive with facts in a way that you cannot be tough and aggressive with emotional retorts. Most of the people that try to be tough on TV are really just being emotional and not factual. — John Sununu

I immediately correct him. 'The word is not idiot but illeist. Illeist is a person who talks in the third person, whereas an idiot just talks; though they sound similar, they cannot be used in place of each other.' Shrugging his shoulders and giving me a goofy grin, he retorts, 'I don't know what an illeist is but I know an idiot when I see one.' The baby immediately stops playing with her tea set, looks up and says, 'Where idiot? Show me! — Twinkle Khanna

Never done anything yourself, have yer? Never performed live to a real audience, have yer?' 'Nor have I fucked a donkey, destabilized a Central American state, or played Dungeons & Dragons,' retorts Cheeseman, 'but I reserve the right to hold opinions on those who do. — David Mitchell

...unfortunately, I am incapable of thinking up perfectly biting, split-second retorts, in any language. The French even have a word for this: l'esprit de l'escalier; staircase wit, something you only think of on the way out. — Tania Aebi

I never know what I'm going to want to curl up in bed with." I shrug.
"How about a man?" she retorts. — Alexandra Potter

It is idle to complain that a society is infringing a moral code intended to make people behave like St. Francis of Assisi if the society retorts that it does not wish to behave like St. Francis, and considers it more natural and right to behave like the Emperor Caligula. When there is a genuine conflict of opinion, it is necessary to go behind the moral code and appeal to the natural law - to prove, that is, at the bar of experience, that St. Francis does in fact enjoy a freer truth to essential human nature than Caligula, and that a society of Caligulas is more likely to end in catastrophe than a society of Franciscans. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Instant enlightenment. A quintessential modernism, culture and religion accommodated to the age of fast food and bumper stickers. But psyche and spirit are not so exempt from the natural domain that they can simply produce self-change instantaneously, on demand. Wisdom precipitates through a notoriously slow apparatus of retorts and flasks, and it has to find receptive ground only in a properly seasoned mind. — Kenny Smith

Luke! ... We have to be able to do cool dancing so we don't embarrass our child!"
"I'm a very cool dancer," replies Luke. "Very cool indeed,"
"No you're not!"
"I had dance lessons in my teens, you know," he retorts. "I can waltz like Fred Astire."
"Waltz?" I echo derisively. "That's not cool! We need to know all the street moves. Watch me."
I do a couple funky head-wriggle body-pop maneuvers, like they do on rap videos. When I look up, Luke is gaping at me.
"Sweetheart," he says. "What are you doing?"
"It's hip-hop!" I say. "It's street!"
"Becky! Love!" Mum has pushed her way through her dancing guests to reach me. "What's wrong? Has labour started?"
Honestly. My family has no idea about contemporary urban steet dance trends. — Sophie Kinsella

Verbal clashes seldom come to a satisfying end. They peter out in weak retorts that leave you wishing you'd been as clever in the moment as you are in reviewing the conversation later. — Sue Grafton

You can't switch sides!" I glare at him in fury.
"I was never on your side," retorts Lorcan. "Your side is the nutty side. — Sophie Kinsella

So what, you her daddy or something?" the little goon laughs at Tank. Tank steps around me right up to the guy. Tank's got a good eighty pounds and nine inches on him. The little goon looks even smaller standing by Tank. "Only when I'm fuckin' her," Tank retorts with a satisfied smile. — Jaci J.

She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity. — Robert Louis Stevenson

You're so full of yourself."
"You wish you were full of myself," he retorts.
I shiver and blush. "I can't tell if that was the best comeback ever or the worst. — L. H. Cosway

All kids are devils in disguise," Rose retorts, her forearms on the bar, "and apparently I'm the only one who sees them for what they really are." "And what is that?" "Small, tiny gremlins. — Krista Ritchie

Science is not, as so many seem to think, something apart, which has to do with telescopes, retorts, and test-tubes, and especially with nasty smells, but it is a way of searching out by observation, trial and classification; whether the phenomena investigated be the outcome of human activities, or of the more direct workings of nature's laws. Its methods admit of nothing untidy or slip-shod; its keynote is accuracy and its goal is truth. — Archibald E. Garrod

O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-and-white dust from the chipped brick-and-plaster walls, swirl around them in a rainbow haze. Something vividly green flares up from one of the overturned retorts, goes right out again. O'Shaughnessy tears the emptied gun away, flings it off somewhere. More breaking glass, and this time a tart pungent smell that makes the nostrils sting. The crunch of pulverized tube glass underfoot makes it sound as if they were scuffling in sand or hard-packed snow. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich