Insults Insult Similes Appear In Many Categories Throughout
Insults (Insult Similes Appear In Many Categories Throughout)
- (It was) an affront, like a lewd remark —Scott Spencer
- A day away from Tallulah [Bankhead] is like a month in the country —Howard Dietz
- Has a head as big as a horse, and brains as much as an ass —Thomas Fuller
A more condensed version: “A head like a horse with the brains of an ass.”
- He’s like a bagpipe, you never hear him till his belly is full —Thomas Fuller
- He’s like a man who sits on a stove and then complains that his backside is burning —W. S. Gilbert
Gilbert’s comparison was made in response to his partner’s complaint that his (Gilbert’s) words limited his desire to write “fine” music while the Gilbert and Sullivan work supported his lavish life style, quoted by Stephen Holden, New York Times, July 27, 1986
- He [Napoleon] spoke like a concierge and said ‘armistice’ for ‘amnesty’ and ‘section’ for ‘session’ —Anatole France
France compared Napoleon’s speech to that of a concierge to emphasize that what he said unofficially was quite different from the sayings manufactured for him by hirelings.
- He thinks like Nixon, talks like Eisenhower, goofs like Goldwater —Noel Parmentel on John V. Lindsay, Esquire, October, 1965
- His arms look like a buggy whip with fingers —Fred Allen
- If he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has no thought upon the subject —Samuel Johnson on Samuel Foote, October 19, 1769
- I missed you like Booth missed Lincoln —Elmer Rice
This line comes from one of Rice’s best known plays, Counsellor At Law.
- Insults are like bad coins; we cannot help their being offered to us, but we need not take them —C. H. Spurgeon
- The king [Prince Albert of England] looks like a retired butcher —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
This much quoted remark originated with a letter to Holmes’ parents, on June 13, 1834.
- Like a sewer rat that wants to scurry into a hole —Kenzaburo Oë
- Like so many country people who lead a natural outdoor life, his features had hardly any definition. He gave me the impression of an underdone veal cutlet —Alexander King
- Looks as if he had never been born and could not be extinguished —Harriet Martineau
- She looked like a street just before they put on the asphalt —George Ade
- She looked rather like a malicious Betty Grable —Truman Capote
- A slight (of that kind) stimulates a man’s fighting power; it is like getting a supply of fresh bile —Henrik Ibsen
- Some insults come like a blow on the head the morning after, but a few are balm —Norman Mailer
- They’re [the Kennedy men] like dogs, they have to pee on every fire hydrant —Truman Capote
- Why don’t you buy some stuffing? Your bosoms look like fried eggs —Reynolds Price
- Why don’t you get a haircut; you look like a chrysanthemum —P. G. Wodehouse
- You are like a cuckoo, you have but one song —H. G. Bohn’s Handbook of Proverbs
A modern variation of this is “He has as many good features as a cuckoo has songs.”
See Also: DULLNESS
- You look as if you’d been put through a washing machine —John Dos Passos
- You [Harold Ross] look like a dishonest Abe Lincoln —Alexander Woolcott
Woolcott’s much quoted comparison of the New Yorker editor Harold Ross to a dishonest Abe Lincoln is one of many quotes seeded around the famous Algonquin Round Table, and widely circulated in the media and books ever since.
- You look like a million dollars, green and wrinkled —Saul Bellow
- You’re funny as a boil on the ass —Harold Adams
- Your losing one pound is like Bayonne losing one mosquito —line from the television show “The Honeymooners.”
The simile was delivered by Alice/Audrey Meadows to Ralph/Jackie Gleason.
- You talk such convoluted crap you must have a tongue like a corkscrew —William Mcllvanney
- You’ve got a foot movement like a baby hippotamus trying to side-step a jab from a humming-bird … and your knees are about as limber as a couple of Yale pass-keys (addressed to a dancer) —O. Henry