Shakespearean Insult Quotes

Come, thou tortoise! ~ William Shakespeare

Men from children nothing differ. ~ William Shakespeare

This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship ~ William Shakespeare

Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! ~ William Shakespeare

As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed
With raven's feather from unwholesom fen
Drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye
And blister you all o'er! ~ William Shakespeare

If "Frailty, thy name is woman", Frailty must be a man named as 'woman ~ Munia Khan

Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindering knotgrass made,
You bead, you acorn! ~ William Shakespeare

Thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows. ~ William Shakespeare

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam ~ William Shakespeare

She was my friend because she was kind and funny but she had a face like two oysters fused together in a Star Trek matter transporter accident. ~ Andrew Hinkinson

Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

sarcasm is the ability to insult an idiot without realizing it ~ Jhon Green

His Scotch bear-leader, Mr Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Your wit never ceases to underwhelm me. ~ A&E Kirk

there are moments when indignation can rouse even a seemingly hardened prisoner-indignation not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

The nobles had made reading unpopular, as it showed that one couldn't afford to buy spells or magical devices, since one had to get knowledge to do things the ordinary way; even if this view held little logic, the king himself was known to insult readers as "bookfaces" or "unable to think for themselves, so they need to spout what others have said," and these opinions became popular, as did most views expressed by the king or his son. ~ Colleen Chen

O Lord Most-wise, strengthen us by Your power that we not fear the non-believing world neither when they lash us with whips nor when they insult us with words for Your sake. ~ Nikolaj Velimirovic

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

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home. ~ James Thurber

But these people _announced_ their madness ... they flaunted their insanity, they weren't half mad and half not, curled around a door frame. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it. ~ Zadie Smith

The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf. ~ Kelly Corrigan

You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?"
"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody ... I'm hard put, sometimes - baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own. ~ Harper Lee

Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight. ~ Duane Michals

Straight men will insult and assault and beat and kill gay men because they are terrified. Because masculinity is the foundation they built their whole worldview on, the set of lies that lets them believe they are inherently better than women, and gay people expose how flimsy and arbitrary the whole thing is. ~ Sam J. Miller

I assure you, you will never survive on your wits alone. ~ LeBron James

If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual preeminence. If it be a received truth that the Creator has repeatedly interposed in the government of the universe and displayed his immediate agency in miraculous interpositions, it is an insult to any reader to tell him that the being slumbers on his throne and rules under a "primal arrangement in his counsels," and "by a code of laws of unbending operation. ~ David Brewster

Retribution is tricky ... The insult isn't usually worth the risk of punishment. And eventually one learns that karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch. ~ Candace Bushnell

You can't marry her," Araminta insisted.
Benedict turned to his mother. "Is there any reason I need to consult Lady Penwood about this?"
"None that I can think of," Lady Bridgerton replied.
"She is nothing but a whore," Araminta hissed. "Her mother was a whore, and blood runs - urp!"
Benedict had her by the throat before anyone was even aware that he had moved. "Don't," he warned, "make me hit you."
The magistrate tapped Benedict on the shoulder. "You really ought to let her go."
"Might I muzzle her?"
The magistrate looked torn, but eventually he shook his head. ~ Julia Quinn

First you say I am a murderer - an agent in league against you - and now I am a deluded heartsick girl! Pray make up your mind so I can scoff at you with precision! ~ Gordon Dahlquist

The four eaglets are my four sons who cease not to persecute me even unto death. The youngest of them, whom I now embrace with so much affection, will sometime in the end insult me more grievously and more dangerously than any of the others. ~ Henry II Of France

Where I came from, just nodding and smiling when someone expressed views was the ultimate insult. If people weren't yelling about politics in our house then they were arguing about music, or movies, or food. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face. ~ Sarah Dunant

C++ is an insult to the human brain ~ Niklaus Wirth

He smiled without his teeth. Small, shyly. I found myself smiling back. Like an impulse
Then he ruined it by saying…
"You're not like other girls, are you?"
And I activated.
Every single emotion I'd been squashing into my guts exploded like a burst appendix. I jumped off the bed and turned to him with a scowl I was sure he'd need permanent therapy to recover from.
"Are you kidding me Harry?"
"Woah Audrey. Hey, hey, hey. It's a compliment."
I felt like screaming.
"It's NOT a compliment.
I threw my arms up, any motion to get rid of the rage pulsing through me.
It's an insult to every single woman on this PLANET. Don't you DARE try and pull that shit on me.
"What shit?!" Harry was stupid enough to ask. "I was saying something nice…"
I shook my head so hard.
"No, you were saying something clichéd and UNTRUE. I AM like other girls, Harry. Don't misinterpret my hatred of romance as some kooky, laid-back, manic pixie NONSENSE. I am DAMAGED. I am not CUTE. I am emotionally-fucking-traumatised right now, okay? I am screaming on the inside. I am too angry and messed up to contain all the stuff girls spend every day containing. That's why I seem different. That is NOT sexy. ~ Holly Bourne

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

The biggest insult to any parent is a child that lives up to society standards and not his or her full potential. ~ Unarine Ramaru

It's not the theme parks of Paradiso and Inferno that I dread most - the heavenly rides, the hellish crowds - and I could live with the insult of eternal oblivion. I don't even mind not knowing which it will be. What I fear is missing out. Health desire or mere greed, I want my life first, my due, my infinitesimal slice of endless time and one reliable chance of a consciousness. I'm owed a handful of decades to try my luck on a freewheeling planet. That's the ride for me - the Wall of Life. I want my go. I want to become. Put another way, there's a book I want to read, not yet published, not yet written, though a start's been made. I want to read to the end of My History of the Twenty-First Century. I want to be there, on the last page, in my early eighties, frail but sprightly, dancing a jig on the evening of December 31, 2099. ~ Ian McEwan

The true luxury and the real potlatch of our times falls to the poverty-stricken, that is, to the individual who lies down and scoffs. A genuine luxury requires the complete contempt for riches, the somber indifference of the individual who refuses to work and makes his life on the one hand an infinitely ruined splendor, and on the other, a silent insult to the laborious lie of the rich. ~ Georges Bataille

Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us. ~ Franz Grillparzer

I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It's not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking. ~ Terence McKenna

One of the first evidences of a real lady, is that she should be modest. By modesty we mean that she shall not say, do, nor wear anything that would cause her to appear gaudy, ill-bred, or unchaste. There should be nothing about her to attract unfavorable attention, nothing in her dress or manner that would give a man an excuse for vulgar comment. When we dress contrary to the rule of modesty we give excuse for unwholesome thoughts in the mind of those who look upon us, and every girl who oversteps these bounds makes herself liable to misunderstanding and insult, though she may be innocent of any such intention. ~ Margaret Hale

A third ... candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work. ~ Bill Bryson

That caravan looks as if it's all Vorin. Also, you look a little spindly for a Horneater."
"Did you just insult the princess's weight?" Tyn asked, aghast.
Storms! She was good. She actually managed to produce angerspren with the remark.
Well, nothing to do but soldier on.
"I am offend!" Shallan yelled.
"You have offended Her Highness again!"
"Very offend!"
"You'd better apologize."
"No apologize!" Shallan declared. "Boots! ~ Brandon Sanderson

A brick could be dropped at the feet of your enemy, as a gift, as an insult, as a way of saying "I'll tear down the wall between us - and tear down the walls of your life." Then you might try offering him a cheese sandwich. ~ Jarod Kintz

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. ~ Margaret Cho

You, dragon, are the most - "
"Amazing being you've ever met." It wasn't a question from him.
It was a statement.
"I was going to say the most arrogant son of a bitch."
He blinked. "Well that's rude. ~ G.A. Aiken

There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and that they are just allowing everybody else to camp out on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

I hope you were going to come pry your sister off my back," Paca clips as Rayna swims up. "She's quite rude."
Galen throws Rayna a look, to which she lifts her chin. "Paca and her pudgy father over there are full of whale dung," Rayna informs her brothers.
"Rayna," Grom barks. "Mind your manners."
Rayna lifts her chin even higher. Here we go. "Paca is a fraud, Grom," she says. "You can't mate with her. Sorry to ruin your ceremony. Let's go, Galen."
Paca gasps as Jagen swims up to the party, almost stuttering in his fury. "You little ... little stonefish! How dare you insult my daughter?"
Galen grabs Rayna's arm. "What did you do?" he hisses.
She jerks her arm away and gives him a superior look. "If Paca has the Gift of Poseidon, I have the Gift of Triton. Don't ask me what it is though, because I don't have a clue."
"Rayna, enough!" Grom says, grabbing her other arm. "Apologize. Right now."
"Apologize for what? Telling the truth? Sorry, not feeling it. ~ Anna Banks

In the solitude of death, the young child or the mature adult can turn to another for comfort without feeling childish or dependent. The newly emancipated, self-sufficient young adult may have too much personal pride to allow himself to accept the support and the understanding he so desperately needs as he moves toward death. The specific emotional reaction of the newly mature young man to the prospect of personal death is RAGE. He feels that life is completely within his grasp so that death above all else is the great ravisher and destroyer. These mature young men who have worked, trained and striven to reach self-confidence and self-sufficiency now appreciate what they can do and what they can enjoy and that suddenly it will all end. They are so ready to live, to them death is a brutal, personal attack, an unforgivable insult, a totally unacceptable event. ~ Ronald J. Glasser

His hands are off," Gabrielle pointed out.
"Posture's wrong," Kat said.
"He's still ... hot," Gabrielle said, as if it were the greatest insult in the world.
"I feel so objectified. So ... cheap," Hale told them. ~ Ally Carter

To attempt to pay for salvation with church membership, prayers, or good deeds is an insult to Christ, who paid the full price-and is a rejection of the gift of God's grace. ~ Dave Hunt

I'm exactly as unlikely to blab our secrets to an anonymous flunky as I am to a Court decoration with a reputation as a gambler and a fop," I said finally.
"'Court decoration'?" he repeated, with a faint smile. The strengthening light of dawn revealed telltale marks under his eyes. So he was tired. I was obscurely glad.
"Yes," I said, pleased to expand on my insult. "My father's term."
"You've never wished to meet a…Court decoration for yourself?"
"No." Then I added cheerily, "Well, maybe when I was a child."
The Marquis of Shevraeth, Galdran's commander-in-chief, grinned. It was the first real grin I'd seen on his face, as if he were struggling to hold in laughter. Setting his cup down, he made a graceful half-bow from his seat on the other side of the fire and said, "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lady Meliara."
I sniffed.
"And now that I've been thoroughly put in my place," he said, "let us leave my way of life and proceed to yours. I take it your revolt is not engineered for the benefit of your fellow-nobles, or as an attempt to reestablish your mother's blood claim through the Calahanras family. Wherefore is it, then?"
I looked up in surprise. "There ought to be no mystery obscuring our reasons. Did you not trouble to read the letter we sent to Galdran Merindar before he sent Debegri against us? It was addressed to the entire Court, and our reasons were stated as plainly as we could write them--and all our names signed to it. ~ Sherwood Smith

The ignorant Insults of Individuals will not hinder me from doing my duty to my Art ~ William Blake

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! ~ William Shakespeare

The pedestal is immobilizing and subtly insulting whether or not some women yet realize it. We must move up from the pedestal. ~ Wilma Scott Heide

At the sound of the heavy knob turning, he cursed under his breath. She was coming in, damn it!
To stop Maria before she ruined everything, he grabbed her about the waist, hauled her against him, and sealed his mouth to hers.
At first she seemed too stunned to do anything. When after a moment, he felt her trying to draw back from him, he caught her behind the neck in an iron grip.
"Oh," Gran said in a stiff voice. "Beg pardon."
Dimly he heard the door close and footsteps retreating, but before he could let Maria go, a searing pain shot through his groin, making him see stars. Blast her, the woman had kneed him in the ballocks!
As he doubled over, fighting to keep from passing out, she snapped, "That was for making me look like a whore, too!"
When she turned for the door, he choked out, "Wait!"
"Why should I?" she said, heading inexorably forward. "You've done nothing but insult and humiliate me before your family."
Still reeling, he presented his only ace in the hole, "If you return to town," he called after her, "what will you do about your Nathan?"
That halted her, thank God.
He forced himself to straighten, though the room spun a little. "You still need my help, you know."
Slowly, she faced him. "So far you haven't demonstrated any genuine intent to offer help," she said icily.
"But I will." He gulped down air, struggling for mastery over his pain. "Tomorrow we'll return to town and hire a runner. I know one who's ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Salt. Wound. Together at last. ~ Maureen Johnson

The road ran along the north side of the river, a shy and obsequious road that dodged every bank and lift and wound through the pecan trees and never insisted on its own way. ~ Paulette Jiles