Anton Chekhov
Playwright, Short Story Writer
"There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality."
Insulting quotes
Insulting
193 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military Leader, Emperor
"England is a nation of shopkeepers."
Oscar Wilde
Writer
"Life is too short to learn German"
Kresley Cole
Author
"The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect."
Terry Pratchett
Author
"All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed."
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Insulting quotes (page 1 of 10)
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"I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words toward anyone, for neither diminishes the strength of the enemy."
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"Music is worth doing just because. It doesn’t have to be justified by some political point of view, and it’s kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else."
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"Magic is a performance, and a performance should have an honesty, a relevance and a resonance if it is to be offered to spectators without insulting them."
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"It's always more interesting when you're doing things with someone you like because you're much more open to suggesting things. Also, it's fun. It's like if you're sitting with your mates and you're bantering, or you're winding each other up and insulting each other in a playful way, but having fun with it."
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"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less."
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"A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase."
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"About one thing the Englishman has a particularly strict code. If a bird says Cluk bik bik bik bik and caw you may kill it, eat it or ask Fortnums to pickle it in Napoleon brandy with wild strawberries. If it says tweet it is a dear and precious friend and you'd better lay off it if you want to remain a member of Boodles."
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"Brains aren't everything. In fact in your case they're nothing."
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"It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of one's life, and then come round."
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"Thirty millions, mostly fools."
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"The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral."
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"You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them."
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"Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress."
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"To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white."
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"It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you it is your own opinion which is provoking."
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"Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching."
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"An Englishman does everything on principle: he fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles."
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"Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them."
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"A broad definition of crime in England is that it is any lower-class activity that is displeasing to the upper class."
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"How would you like to feel the way she looks?"
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