I’ll be honest, today I was just like, hey, what are some of the best insults from the most literary minds? You know how it is. Sometimes people are so frustratingly, infuriatingly, engagingly stupid or rude, and you just want to have that perfect insult ready to slay them on the spot, even if you don’t say anything and just think it. I mean hey, they may be a jerk, but you just SLAYED them in your mind, so, at least your day’s better now.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

You’ve heard the adage. And you know how true it is. (But maybe like me, you didn’t know who coined it until today. You day something learn every new.)

Every writer knows the power of words. Surely this extends to the spoken word, not just the written. Many a speaker has wielded words like a weapon, from kings of old, to modern politicians, to middle school bullies.

Words can be used as a shield to defend, and also as a sword to SLAY. So here you go, some of the best insults out of literary history that I could find on the internet today. Use one the next time someone’s being an insufferable idiot, or an arrogant poopoo-hole, or even just when you want to joke around with your closest friend. I’ve also heard these will yield results in bed*.

*Disclaimer I in no way imply what kind of results and encourage you to consider they might be very negative ones.​

For when someone’s just being dumb:

“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

For when someone’s just that bad:

“He would make a lovely corpse.” – Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

For when someone’s being batpoop crazy, or rather, squirrelpoop nutty:

“She’s nuttier than squirrel poo.” - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

A good retaliation when someone’s picking on your looks:

“If looks could kill, you’d soon find out that yours couldn’t.” – Iris Owens, After Claude

For that one coworker who thinks they’re better than everyone else and in reality sucks at their job (doesn’t everyone have one of them?):

“The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.” - George R.R. Martin, A Feast of Crows

For someone who won’t stop talking poop, especially if she’s named Martha:

“In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement right up to your neck. No … Right up to your nose … That’s much quieter.” - Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

For a classic put-down:

“My dear, I don’t give a damn.” - Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

And you know that one person who is just so sucky—rude, arrogant, annoying, optionally racist and sexist and all-around offensive. It seems like there’s not enough words in the English language to describe how horrendously, abominably, tragically sucky they are. So just, like, use all of them:

“[You are] a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable 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, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.” - good ol’ William Shakespeare, King Lear