The World's Snappiest Comebacks

"When I was your age, Alcibiades, I talked just the way you are now talking," Pericles said.

Alcibiades' reply: "If only I had known you, Pericles, when you were at your best."

One-liners can be devastating, but the beauty of Bentsen's put-down was the way it built rhythmically on itself through repetition and short, declarative sentences. In the 1988 vice presidential debate, Quayle, 41, had just finished comparing himself to Kennedy on the matter of experience.

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy," Bentsen started, and viewers couldn't help but notice the visual difference between the two men -- Quayle's boyishness and Bentsen's gray-haired, patrician looks. "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine . Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Snap!

We don't feel bad for victims of verbal violence if we feel in some way they deserve it. "American Idol's" Simon Cowell is in best form when he insults performers who think too much of themselves, because pride is right up there with hypocrisy on America's list of Things We Hate Most. That's why the put-down is best as a rejoinder to another, weaker put-down. There's a classic one of these about Churchill -- possibly apocryphal, but so good it bears repeating.

A woman supposedly told him, "If I were your wife, I would poison your coffee."

Churchill replied, "If I were your husband, I would drink it."

Delivery is everything, as the writers for the recently finished TV show "Will & Grace" understood so well. The put-downs on "Will & Grace" had a Wildean sensibility, an arched-eyebrow coolness. As the gay character Jack explains to a fellow who has just come out of the closet in season 5, "[W]hen you say something witty at a party, you should always appear bored, take a sip of your drink, and look away. That way, it'll seem like it happens all the time."

We know how hard it is to come up with the perfect put-down. In MTV's insult-fest, "Yo Momma," two people hurl cruel jokes at each other, and few of the lines hit the mark.

We admire those who are witty all the time, even if we don't want to get too close. It was said of literary wit Dorothy Parker that her friends feared leaving the room because of what she might say about them.

Once, upon hearing that a writer she knew was always kind to her inferiors, Parker barked back: "And where does she find them?"