"they never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - thomas brackett reed
― am0n, Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
"a modest little person, with much to be modest about." - winston churchill
― am0n, Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
Reporter: What do you think of western civilization?
Mahatma Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
― rob, Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
“Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so” = bertrand russell
― Touché Gödel (ledge), Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
Judge: I have read your case, Mr Smith, and I am no wiser now than I was when I started.Smith: Possibly not, My Lord, but much better informed.
1st Earl Birkenhead
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
telegrams
Bernard Shaw: "Have reserved two tickets for first night. Come and bring a friend if you have one."
Churchill: "Impossible to come to first night. Will come to second night, if you have one."
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
"He can't help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth."- Ann Richards (about George Bush)
― am0n, Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down a hole and die - Woody Allen.
Prob my favourite ever quote.
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
Reporting I'm drunk is like saying there was a Tuesday last week.- Grace Slick
good self-zing
― am0n, Saturday, 28 April 2012 23:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.- Ludwig van Beethoven
Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain
― am0n, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
Montagu: I don't know whether you'll die on the gallows or of the pox
Wilkes: That will depend on whether i embrace your principles or your mistress
― Just like you, except hot (ShariVari), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
yes
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
attributed to some french dude also iirc
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
now that is a zing
― am0n, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm going to just stipulate the collected zings of Dorothy Parker, but for example:
"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
Capote on Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing."Mickey Mantle on Jim Bouton and Ball Four: "Who?"
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
Except you have both the quote and the credit wrong...
― ┗|∵|┓ (sic), Sunday, 29 April 2012 01:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
Those guys grew up in L.A. and they don't have cow-shit on their boots - they just got dog shit from Laurel Canyon. - Tom Waits
― windjammer voyage (blank), Sunday, 29 April 2012 01:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
Except you have both the quote and the credit wrong.
really? i think i first saw this quoted in another book, but definitely as i repeated it here. who was it really?
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
"This book fills a much-needed gap." - Moses Hadas
― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp
there are a bunch of variations on that tragedy/comedy line, but they're all attributed to mel brooks
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
moses hadas quote is awesome
yeah i googled a bit, it was credited to woody allen when i first encountered it, really annoying to be wrong about it, great quote though.
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
classic Parker: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
― GoT SPOILER ALERT (Gukbe), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
Nancy Astor: "If you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
PETER GRANT: "Hello, I'm Peter Grant. I manage Led Zeppelin."
BOB DYLAN: "Hey, I don't come to you with my problems, do I?"
― pplains, Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Parker isn't real, afaik
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
really?
― GoT SPOILER ALERT (Gukbe), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
JFK: "If this plane crashed, we'd probably all be killed, wouldn't we?"
MORT SAHL: "Yes, Mr. President."
JFK: "And it occurs to me that your name would be in very small print."
― pplains, Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh sick burn
― Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
"open manhole" is the usual version of the Brooks quote, specificity makes it funnier
― ┗|∵|┓ (sic), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
there have been a few Snopes/Straight Dope/etc. forum investigations of the Parker quote and no one can ever find that she actually said it (usually attributed to a review of Atlas Shrugged or a Benito Mussolini novel, the latter is definitely untrue)
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
too long to be a zing, but Whittaker Chambers's Atlas Shrugged review is probably the best/most brutal literary takedown "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal….Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”"
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
lol that tom waits quote reminds me of casey kasem's 'these guys are from england and who gives a shit'
― balls, Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
not quite zings, perhaps, but vladimir nabokov was the king of offhand dismissals:
Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books." That, for instance, Mann's asinine "Death in Venice," or Pasternak's melodramatic, vilely written "Dr. Zhivago," or Faulkner's corn-cobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces" or at least what journalists term "great books," is to me the sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
George Bernard Shaw, NSFW
― ILX uh-huh-uh uh-huh uh-huh BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP (snoball), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
(note 'epigram' was early 90's speak for 'zing')
― ILX uh-huh-uh uh-huh uh-huh BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP (snoball), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
early 1990s?
― the pinefox, Sunday, 29 April 2012 09:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
Martin Luther then attacked Henry VIII in print, calling him a “pig, dolt, and liar”. [9]:227 At the request of Henry VIII, More set about composing a rebuttal: the resulting Responsio ad Lutherum was published at the end of 1523. In the Responsio, More defended the supremacy of the papacy, the sacraments, and other church traditions. More’s language, like Luther’s, was virulent, and he branded Luther an “ape”, a “drunkard”, and a “lousy little friar” amongst other insults. [9]:230 While writing under the pseudonym of Rosseus, More mirrors Luther's own unscholarly use of language. At one point More offers to:
"throw back into your paternity's shitty mouth, truly the shit-pool of all shit, all the muck and shit which your damnable rottenness has vomited up". [16]
― Roberto Spiralli, Sunday, 29 April 2012 12:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
awesome thread
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
(xpost) I can't find it, but I've got a book of interviews with Nabokov somewhere, and his putdowns of other writers are pretty great.
Ditto Kael's back-to-back takedowns of Siegfried Kracauer and (of course) Sarris in I Lost It at the Movies, although both pieces tend to methodically build arguments rather than zing.
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
(allegedly)
Somerset Maugham watching Spencer Tracy during filming of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: "Which one is he playing now?"
― seapunk run. run punk run! (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm with Nabokov on Pasternak and Faulkner, but Mann's asinine "Death in Venice"? ;_;
― emil.y, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
Also, I've read a bit of Nabokov's literary criticism now, and for someone who can reach the heights he can (for which read: OMG Pale Fire is amazing) he's pretty buttoned up and conservative in his thinking...
― emil.y, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
GB Shaw once wrote in a book review, "Once you put it down, you can't pick it up"
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ravel has refused the Legion d'honneur, but all his music accepts it
(satie)
― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
I often laugh at well crafted (or just outrageously funny) putdowns independent of whether I agree with them or not. (Re Nabokov.)
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
Nabokov loved Cheever's "The Country Husband" so.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
Gore Vee-dal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
"Pinchfaced cocksucker" is for Amis a compliment.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 20:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
Casey Stengel had maybe the greatest accidental zing ever: "I got a kid, Greg Goosen, he's 20 years old and in ten years he's got a chance to be 30." (You'll come across a dozen slightly different versions of this.)
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
By calling that accidental, I'm probably buying into the caricature of Stengel as a doddering old man; he was exceptionally smart about baseball, and may have known exactly what he was saying about Goosen there.
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
Greatest cricket sledge zing of all time:
Glenn McGrath to Eddo Brandes: "How come you're so fucking fat?"Brandes: "Because every time I fuck your wife she gives me a biscuit"
― Touché Gödel (ledge), Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
Rufus T. Firefly: Not that I care, but where is your husband?"Gloria Teasdale: Why, he's dead.Rufus T. Firefly: I bet he's just using that as an excuse.Gloria Teasdale: I was with him til the very end.Rufus T. Firefly: No wonder he passed away.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
from the same scene: Don't look now, but there's one too many people in this room and I think it's you.
― Mordy, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
i could swear i saw a clip of capote actually saying that kerouac line, but that what he actually said was "that isn't writing, that's...just...TYPEWRITING!"
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
this isnt handwriting, its typewriting! *gets the vapors*
― lag∞n, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
i kinda think of nabokov's critical views as just an extension of his artistic character, no less than any of his novels -- most of his interviews have the exact same 'voice' as most of his fiction. it's funny that he claimed to hate 'death in venice,' since 'lolita' could be read as an answer to it (or a parody of it).
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
tbh i've come to feel that gore vidal's zings are probably his best and most lasting works of art. i tried picking up that huge book of his essays a while back and most of them are a slog.
Ignore the political writing and concentrate on the lit crit (the lit crit is political too): his essays on Mencken, James, Wharton -- classic explication de text. And he deserves credit for reviving interest in Dawn Powell and James Purdy, not to mention breaking Calvino on these shores.
I'll defend Burr and Lincoln as great novels too.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
i have nothing against lonely guys in rooms but the desk gangster routine is just kinda tiresome
Really considering this for a display name.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
a zing of beauty doesn't need all this contextual analysis, nor does it need to be an instant riposte nor a product of bile, sometimes a zing's just a zing, here's something mean about u i thought of, lol. *telegrams churchill*. Medium's not rly that important imo.
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
a zing of beauty is a joy forever
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
Drunk Jack Kerouac at poetry reading: Frank O'Hara, you're destroying American poetry!
O'Hara: That's more than you've ever done for it.
― President Keyes, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
darragh OTM
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah IMO, that is why ILX can be funny to read, like obviously once it gets to be an intense clusterfuck thread it's not fun at all but when it's something milder and I have no personal horse in the race, watching people throw off rejoinders and ripostes, when they're good, is really entertaining. And ILX is great for this because, behind the more visible monuments of the heated vicious threads, there's a whole lot of people killing time talking about something that nobody actually takes all that seriously.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
the zinger games
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
most of [Nabokov's] interviews have the exact same 'voice' as most of his fiction.
iirc, he'd require the interviewer's list of questions be submitted to him, with his responses entirely written rather than spontaneous.
― "Fourvel - it's like Fievel, but one less." (R Baez), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
ahead of his time with that one
― Number None, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
then he would revise his answers!
xpost
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
lot of amazing zing scholarship itt... not
― lag∞n, Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:50 AM
lock thread pls
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
irc, he'd require the interviewer's list of questions be submitted to him, with his responses entirely written rather than spontaneous.
Cf., Nat Hentoff's 1966 Dylan interview in Playboy, espcially Dylan's explanation of how he became a rock and roll star. From the same interview:
PLAYBOY: Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be President?DYLAN: No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be Harry Truman?
― clemenza, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
no im srs lock the thread
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
:-/
― flopson, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
someone zing amon
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
unzingable
― arsenio and old ma$e (m bison), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
I will zing him
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
...
― flopson, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
zinging mt. everest
― dayo, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
It's always some zing.
― clemenza, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
hello anon
― The Startrekman, Sunday, April 29, 2012 4:19 PM (Yesterday)
― the sunno)))boys (electricsound), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
AH SAY HEY MON
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
lol Startrekman
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
sick burn
― balls, Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:59
p sure that was prof. wgw of this parish tho?
― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 September 2012 00:57 (7 months ago) Permalink
This thread will belong to Mitt Romney come Wednesday.
Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 September 2012 01:05 (7 months ago) Permalink
Noel Gallagher on Jack White“He looks like Zorro on doughnuts.”
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 30 September 2012 02:32 (7 months ago) Permalink
"As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that."[21]
RIP big man
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:17 (4 months ago) Permalink
was Rummy ever this zingy?
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:18 (4 months ago) Permalink
no but he was a better epistemologist
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:21 (4 months ago) Permalink
zinging saddam just seems too easy
― iatee, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:28 (4 months ago) Permalink
and i had the best present i was going to send you
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/G7199-Modern-Postcard-4x6-General-Norman-Schwarzkopf-/370526552767
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:34 (4 months ago) Permalink
tbf a few other dudes with those qualifications were more successful than norm
― mookieproof, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:37 (4 months ago) Permalink
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 March 2013 17:22 (1 month ago) Permalink
In 1958 Winston Churchill broke his spine in a fall and was required to sleep with a bedrest, which he hated. He and nurse Roy Howells got into a heated argument in which the two swore at one another.In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”
Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”
Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”
“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/03/22/detente/ (!)
― s.clover, Saturday, 23 March 2013 01:56 (1 month ago) Permalink
accidental self zing imo
― wk, Saturday, 23 March 2013 04:36 (1 month ago) Permalink
XP it doesn't really work so well as a zing if the person saying it seems like a d-bag who's hard to sympathize with
― Poliopolice, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:41 (1 month ago) Permalink
yeah remember all those country rock albums tom waits made
― balls, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:54 (1 month ago) Permalink