You can ruin a man in a sentence.
People talk about the press destroying someone, or a boss humiliating an employee, but a good quote or verbal comeback can be just as deadly.
The great and the good are well documented for their quotes. Such as the Winston Churchill classic when he was at a drinks reception.
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee.”
Churchill: “Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.”
The wording of this quote varies depending on where you read it, but the consensus and quick witted reply remains the same.
Or take an equally sharp tough talker, Margaret Thatcher. On describing how her critics will always find something negative to say about her, she implied if she was Jesus Christ they would still find fault with her.
“If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.”
And what led me to think about people’s quotes was something which happened to me on Tuesday and left me laughing for the rest of the day.
I was getting a bus back into Newport and as I hopped off I thanked the driver.
Then, just as I was stepping down, he said : “It’s alright I was going this way anyway.”
He was being smart, but I appreciated him for saying it.
The kind of less humorous quote, the kind that comes back to haunt someone, is usually spouted by a politician. Such as in the run up to the 1997 election when Tony Blair said: “Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.”
But away from the political scene, famous quotes have been used to great effect when stereotyping cultural differences.
Such as Joan Rivers when she said: “I’m Jewish. I don’t work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.”
Oscar Wilde is also known for teaching us a lesson through his humorous school of truth. Looking at the style of many of this famous one-liners, he seems to deflect his own weaknesses by insulting people who do posses his strengths.
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,” and “anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
Interestingly he does this using humour and by his own admission he once said: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
Originality is the key and for fear of falling foul to the wise words of Howard Kandel, I will end with one of his own: “He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass.”
