“paring knives that were duller than a throne speech…”

Bruce Ward in Ottawa Citizen December 27, 2002

“He was not only a bore, he bored for England.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted by Ian Hunter in National Post August 11, 2003 (it was during the Suez Crisis and, Hunter adds, “This article pretty much finished Eden’s political career. Earlier, he had similarly dispatched U.S. Foreign Secretary John Foster Dulles: ‘Dull. Duller. Dulles.’”)

“he seems as unprepossessing as an unshelled peanut.”

Peter C. Newman on Joe Clark in National Post Feb. 19, 2000

“Deja moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.”

“Gilbert Magazine’s Top 15 Yet More Internet Taglines” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6 (and yes, it bends my rule against vulgarity but I find it sufficiently funny)

“A classic vacuous nemesis of the Fifties was the young, progressive Dean of women who was brought in to replace the septuagenarian, traditional dean of women… who had all the give-and-take of Torquemada…”

Florence King in National Review July 12, 1999

“Since life’s a series of disasters, you’d better choose disasters worth having, ones you’ll enjoy & learn from.”

Richard J. Needham according to an email from a friend and colleague May 25, 2001 (I wasn’t able to verify it independently but if Needham didn’t say it he missed a splendid opportunity, to crib from J.M. Barrie’s comment on the theory that Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare)

“He did not lack just the last six inches of steel: he lacked the first.”

The Economist August 24, 1991 (alas, my notes here are incomplete; it was to do with British politician Robert Boothby, but I cannot tell whether it was said by or of him).

“When you’re directionless, you only go one way.”

OK, it's me again, from December 20, 2015. (When I went to enter the source I had forgotten it was me, if it makes quoting myself any less vain.)