Quote of the Week

I’m feeling lighthearted and a little silly this month and the chosen quotes reflect that feeling. This month we are celebrating the art of the insult. People used to be quite clever when putting down another person or group. Insulting another used to be an art form, classy.

Somehow the art of insulting has devolved into four letter words. I much prefer the old way and will share some awesome zingers through the month of September.

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” Mae West

While Mae popularized this insult in her 1934 film, Belle of the Nineties, it first appeared in the 1902 Chicago Sunday Tribune’s humor column, “Merry Andrew’s Jest and Jingle.”

“If you were my husband, sir, I’d give you poison.”

“If you were my wife, I’d take it.”

The earliest attribution I can find for this is 1900 when the humorist Marshall Wilder claimed authorship. The New York Times printed a story with Winston Churchill delivering the line to Nancy Astor in 1949. A popular insult that resurfaces again and again.