A modest little person, with much to be modest about.

—Winston Churchill (about Clement Atlee)

I’ve just learned about his illness.  Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.

—Irvin S.  Cobb

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

—Clarence Darrow

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

—William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.

—Samuel Johnson

He had delusions of adequacy.

—Walter Kerr

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn’t it.

—Groucho Marx

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.

—Thomas Brackett Reed

He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.

—Forrest Tucker

I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

—Mark Twain

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

—Mae West

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

 —Oscar Wilde

He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.

—Billy Wilder

He is a lamentably successful cross between a fox and a hog.

—James Blaine (about Benjamin Franklin)

As an intellectual he bestowed upon the games of golf and bridge all the enthusiasm and perseverance that he withheld from books and ideas.

—Emmet Hughes (about Dwight Eisenhower)