1. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”
– George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill.

2. “Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second; if there is one.”
– Winston Churchill, in response.

3. “Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”
– a member of Parliament to Disraeli

4. “That depends, Sir,” said Disraeli, “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”

5. “He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr

6. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
– Clarence Darrow

7. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
– William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

8. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
– Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

9. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”
– Moses Hadas

10. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
– Mark Twain

11. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..”
– Oscar Wilde

12. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
– Stephen Bishop

13. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
– John Bright

14. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
– Irvin S. Cobb

15. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
– Samuel Johnson

16. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
– Paul Keating

17. “In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
– Charles, Count Talleyrand

18. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
– Forrest Tucker

19. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
– Mark Twain

20. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
– Mae West

21. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
– Oscar Wilde

22. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… For support rather than illumination.”
– Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

23. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
– Billy Wilder

24. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx

25. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
– Winston Churchill

26. “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories of all literature.” – Dorothy Parker, reviewing The Autobiography of Margot Asquith for the Oct. 22, 1927 edition of The New Yorker.

27. “This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”
– Dorothy Parker, in another book review for The New Yorker.