Lugnasa Garlic Planting Moon
When faced with someone else’s incomprehensible slang:
“Well, well, well, well. If it isn’t fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.” – A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
To liven up a dull conversation:
“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.” – Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut
For telling someone to get lost, but nicely:
“I desire that we be better strangers.” – As You Like It, William Shakespeare
For when someone is quite below your notice, and you want to let them know:
“He is simply a hole in the air.” – The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell
For dispelling any illusions:
“Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.” – The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
For disagreements over Magic cards/games of Dungeons and Dragons/cosplay:
“The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.” – A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin
For morons (read: everybody):
“I told him he didn’t even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn’t care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.” – The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
When only the juiciest alliteration will do (or when cursing out children):
“You blithering idiot! … You festering gumboil! You fleabitten fungus! … You bursting blister! You moth-eaten maggot!” – Matilda, Roald Dahl
For someone who thinks they’re better than you:
“This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion!” – A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
For bitter arguments in Parisian bars:
“I misjudged you… You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.” – The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
For proving that you are far loftier than your opponent and (channeling Downton Abbey‘s Dowager Countess):
Cecily: This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different. – The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
When only the most cinematic and recognizable insult will do:
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.” – Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
When you want to cut to the core as quickly as possible:
“You’re not worth the trouble it’d take to hit you. You’re not worth the powder it’d take to blow you up. You’re an empty, hollow fucking shell of a woman…” – Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
For long evenings of verbal sparring:
“In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement right up to your neck. No… right up to your nose… that’s much quieter.” – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee
When you need the ultimate insult:
“Critic!” – Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
For insufferable suck ups:
“She would of been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” – “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor
When you’ve finally decided to say what you’re thinking:
“You bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation.” – Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
For theoretical disagreements that you’d really like to turn into personal attacks:
“It’s a nasty view of things, Gerald… and no wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.” – Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
For that moment that comes in every young man’s life when he needs to quit his band and get a job:
“Barry, you’re over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.” – High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
When nothing else has worked, and only a sheer avalanche of adjectives will suffice:
“Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch.” – King Lear, William Shakespeare
