Wise men speak with sharp tongues



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"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill
 
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
- Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great 
 pleasure."
Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to 
the dictionary."
- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

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

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

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved
 of it."
- Mark Twain

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

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a 
friend... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is 
 one."
- Winston Churchill, in response

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
- Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
- John Bright

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

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson

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

"He had delusions of adequacy."
- Walter Kerr

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

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."
- Robert Redford

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

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by 
diligent hard work, he overcame them."
- James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
- Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on 
 it?"
- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- Mae West

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

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support 
 rather than illumination."
- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
- Billy Wilder
 

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[Contributed by Rufus Blairgowrie]

"I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless 
 bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is haled as 
 a genius. Why, in comparison with him, Raff is a genius".
- Tchaikovsky.