Say What?!

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
—Samuel Johnson, in The Book of Insults (Ancient and Modern),
Nancy McPhee (ed.), pp. 17-18.

The Earl of Sandwich: Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox.
John Wilkes: That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.
— John Wilkes (1727-1797), in Ibid., p. 20.

Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I should flavour your coffee with poison.
Churchill: Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it.
— In Ibid., p. 20.

Bessie Braddock, M.P.: Winston, you're drunk!
Churchill: Bessie, you're ugly. And tomorrow morning I shall be sober.
— In Ibid., p. 20.

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
— Charlotte Whitton (1896-1975), former Mayor of Ottawa,
in Ibid., p. 25.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
— Mark Twain, in Ibid., p. 26.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure; but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
— Samuel Johnson, in Ibid., p. 29.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.
— Viscount Melbourne (1770-1848), in Ibid., p. 51.

He not only overflowed with learning but stood in the slop.
— Sidney Smith (1771-1848), On Thomas Babington Macaulay,
in Ibid., p. 51.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
— George Clemenceau (1841-1929), in Ibid., p. 97.

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), in Ibid., p. 99.

His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst until it died of servitude and overwork.
— Senator William McAdoo (1863-1941), On Warren Harding, in Ibid., p. 124.

The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
— Richard Brinslay Sheruidan (1651-1816), On the Earl of Dundas, in Ibid., p. 128.

I don't object to the Old Man's always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that God Almighty put it there.
— Henry Labouchere (1798-1869), On William Ewart Gladstone, in Ibid., pp. 130-131.

A systematic liar and a beggarly cheat; a swindler and a paltroom .... He has committed every crime that does not require courage.
— Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), On Daniel O'Donnell, in Ibid., p. 131.

He is a self-made man, and worships his creator.
— Benjamin Disraeli, On John Bright, in Ibid., p. 132.