Retorts Quotes

• You know, my dear, I insured my voice for fifty thousand dollars.

  Miriam Hopkins

  Voice, Dollars, Fifty

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• Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.

  Nancy Astor

  Husband, Drinking, Beer

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• Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.

  James Lileks

  Party, People, Drunk

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• The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Powerful, Sacrifice, Men

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• A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

  Roger Scruton

  Risk, Philosopher, Interpretation

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• "This is me, remember!" retorts Suze. "I know what you're like! You used to throw all your bank statements into the trash and hope a complete stranger would pay off your bills!" This is what happens. You tell your friends your most personal secrets, and they use them against you.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Secret, Use, Pay

  "Shopaholic Ties the Knot". Book by Sophie Kinsella, 2002.

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• Well, remember what you said, because in a day or two, I'll have a witty and blistering retort! You'll be devastated THEN

  Bill Watterson

  Witty, Two, Remember

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• I am aware that many critics consider the conditions in the stars not sufficiently extreme . . . the stars are not hot enough. The critics lay themselves open to an obvious retort: we tell them to go and find a hotter place.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Hot, Enough

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• More than once I've had discussions with persons who say things based on a misunderstanding. 'Oh you Catholics worship images.' No we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't! The final retort to that is: I have a doctorate in Catholic theology that I have earned the hard way - by sitting in university classrooms for twelve years. I know what we believe! You get a doctorate in Catholic theology? What do you know about it? Nothing! You don't know anything about it. You're saying things that are born of misunderstanding or ignorance.

  John Corapi

  Believe, Ignorance, Years

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• Instant enlightenment. A quintessential modernism, culture and religion accommodated to the age of fast food and bumper stickers. But psyche and spirit are not so exempt from the natural domain that they can simply produce self-change instantaneously, on demand. Wisdom precipitates through a notoriously slow apparatus of retorts and flasks, and it has to find receptive ground only in a properly seasoned mind.

  Kenny Smith

  Wisdom, Self, Mind

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• Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth; the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. . . . Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.

  William Shakespeare

  Peace, Lying, Order

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 5, sc. 4, l. [108]

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• Every time we hold our tongues instead of returning the sharp retort, show patience with another's faults, show a little more love and kindness, we are helping to stock-pile more of these peace-bringing qualities in the world instead of armaments for war.

  Connie Foster

  Love, Peace, Kindness

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• Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Smart, Audience, Reasoning

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935). “The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography”, p.328, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• I think that Lethal Weapon-style dialogue is overused, it's a necessary aspect of high action films where you have to have the smart retort. You have to say "I'll be back baby" and stuff. It's not my style.

  George Lucas

  Baby, Smart, Thinking

  "Star Wars archive: George Lucas 1999 interview". Interview with Ian Freer, www.empireonline.com. September 1999.

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• One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better.

  Carolyn Hax

  Winning, Atmosphere, Mind

  "Carolyn Hax Live: Use the china". Live chat, live.washingtonpost.com. November 20, 2015.

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• If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Taken, Heart

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• Other Republican candidates may retort to personal attacks and negative ads.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Political, Negative

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• What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, Certainly not with our religion.

  Luther Burbank

  Atheism, Use, Compatible

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• Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Sleep, Eye

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.621, Delphi Classics

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• Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Names, Doubt, Chance

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
  squandering your unquoted mirth,
  which keeps the ground, and never soars,
  while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
  tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
  goes like bullet to its mark;
  while the solid curse and jeer
  never balk the waiting ear.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rude, Waiting, Jake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.103

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• I am the most spontaneous speaker in the world because every word, every gesture, and every retort has been carefully rehearsed.

  George Bernard Shaw

  World, Gestures, Spontaneous

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• If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you’ve said - unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It’s like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder.

  Ann Coulter

  Talking, Two, Age

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• It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.

  Criss Jami

  Counter Attack, Feet, Hug

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.108, Criss Jami

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• REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Strong, War, Gentleman

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.197, University of Georgia Press

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