Arthur Schopenhauer
L'Arte Di Insultare

"When one realizes that the opponent is superior and one will end up being wrong, one becomes offensive, outrageous, rude, that is, one shifts from the issue at hand (since there one has already lost the game) to the opponent and somehow attacks his person [...] This rule is very popular because anyone is able to put it into practice, and thus it is often employed."

Can't argue with that.

But instead of coming up with a collection of simple and direct epithets, like, you know, some savvy swear word invented out of the blue, some irresistible maxims to pronounce on every occasion, here comes good old Sciope with 'these philosopher’s rants that take a lifetime to say out loud, resulting in yawns and/or giggles from our opponent. Which are more than "occasional" insults, they are real personal accusations, often downright racist, for instance against women or Jews or against certain presumed "inferior" social classes. It must be said that this booklet is a posthumous publication, made up of assemblies of old forgotten and/or discarded writings of Sciope, certainly not intended for the publication of a "collection". The fact remains that these are things put in black and white, and therefore, presumably, things that Sciope genuinely thought.

Booklet bought, read (more like skimmed), used as a paperweight, lent, never got it back... better that way, it wasn't anything special. All little nothings (as far as I remember). The fundamental problem is being verbose: "the art" of the insult (as useless as it is in itself -see the apt preface-) should be incisive, decisive, bold, unpredictable but absolutely not verbose, otherwise, it loses all its value.

Got it, Sciopenà?