Insults Insult Similes Appear In Many Categories Throughout

Insults (Insult Similes Appear In Many Categories Throughout)

 
  1. (It was) an affront, like a lewd remark —Scott Spencer
  2. A day away from Tallulah [Bankhead] is like a month in the country —Howard Dietz
  3. 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.”

  4. He’s like a bagpipe, you never hear him till his belly is full —Thomas Fuller
  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. He thinks like Nixon, talks like Eisenhower, goofs like Goldwater —Noel Parmentel on John V. Lindsay, Esquire, October, 1965
  8. His arms look like a buggy whip with fingers —Fred Allen
  9. 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
  10. I missed you like Booth missed Lincoln —Elmer Rice

    This line comes from one of Rice’s best known plays, Counsellor At Law.

  11. Insults are like bad coins; we cannot help their being offered to us, but we need not take them —C. H. Spurgeon
  12. 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.

  13. Like a sewer rat that wants to scurry into a hole —Kenzaburo Oë
  14. 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
  15. Looks as if he had never been born and could not be extinguished —Harriet Martineau
  16. She looked like a street just before they put on the asphalt —George Ade
  17. She looked rather like a malicious Betty Grable —Truman Capote
  18. A slight (of that kind) stimulates a man’s fighting power; it is like getting a supply of fresh bile —Henrik Ibsen
  19. Some insults come like a blow on the head the morning after, but a few are balm —Norman Mailer
  20. They’re [the Kennedy men] like dogs, they have to pee on every fire hydrant —Truman Capote
  21. Why don’t you buy some stuffing? Your bosoms look like fried eggs —Reynolds Price
  22. Why don’t you get a haircut; you look like a chrysanthemum —P. G. Wodehouse
  23. 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

  24. You look as if you’d been put through a washing machine —John Dos Passos
  25. 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.

  26. You look like a million dollars, green and wrinkled —Saul Bellow
  27. You’re funny as a boil on the ass —Harold Adams
  28. 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.

  29. You talk such convoluted crap you must have a tongue like a corkscrew —William Mcllvanney
  30. 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