Help! Literary insults Jack might use

[wendymr]

Okay, I'm giving up after two hours of searching and turning to my flist for help.

The situation is this: Jack's with the Master, who's just announced a 'fun game' - literary quotes. (He's got one in mind, which I'm not revealing at the moment). Jack goes first. What I'd like him to come up with is something offensive but humorous, but recognisable

Comments

[cathica]

This is one of my all-time favourite insults, and I think Jack could really zing the Master with it. But Jack E. Leonard was a comedian who wrote for, among others, Abbot and Costello. Not exactly literary. Still, Jack might use it if he was reaching..."There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."

[wendymr]

Oh, I do like that - but the problem is that the 'rule' of the game is that the quote needs to be from literature. Not necessarily the classics, but at least something recognisable in fiction.

Thanks for the suggestion :)

[cathica]

Well, there's always the old standby, "Success is counted sweetest/ By those who ne'er succeed." Not likely Jack will ever forget that one.

[neadods]

I would think a google of "shakespeare sexual insult" would give you plenty to go on.

[wendymr]

Unfortunately, not really. :( There are plenty of pages of Shakespearean insults, but most of those don't give sources and Google doesn't yield sources, which makes me suspect that they may not be genuine. I did like this one, for example:

Thou puking pox-marked knotty-pated scut

but nothing's coming up as a source for it.

Ah well, I'll keep looking.

[msp_hacker]

"She has more hair than wit, and more fault than hair, and more wealth than faults." It was "Two Gentleman from Verona" though, so I'm not sure if that would be well known.

But "I bite my thumb at thee, sir." is.

[wendymr]

Oh, I know that one, but Jack can do a lot better than that ;) Think I have something that'll work, though, unless anyone comes up with an absolutely irresistible line.

[nyaaaaaauuuuuuu]

Oscar Wilde has also produced some zingers...

Unfortunately the only quote coming to mind right now is, "All women end up like their mothers - that's their tragedy; no man does - that's his."

OOOOOOOOh, but: check out www.quotationspage.com. Here's the Oscar Wilde page. Maybe some of these'd come in useful...?

[wendymr]

Wilde is generally good, but not in this instance. I'd already pretty much exhausted Wilde, Bernard Shaw and other similar writers before posting.

Dorothy Parker has some wickedly funny lines for putting men down, but unfortunately they're not from literature so no use either...