Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

When Business and Finance Majors belittle and patronize their English Major colleagues (and believe me, this happens a lot), the latter are prepared.  They allow themselves a small smile and begin at once to recall various choice insults and slights from the annals of Literature.  Particularly creative are insults of the Renaissance Period.  Shakespearean plays in particular boast a vast arsenal of curses from which the English Major can  choose.  These insults are often embedded in full sentences or even full paragraphs.  Salty and descriptive, they're generally more effective and evocative than today's standard university insults which usually involve the word "dick" being attached to some noun or another.

For example:

Business Major: "What do you do, besides read books all day?"

English Major: "I write about them."

Business Major: (Sniggers vulgarly)  "That's not gonna pay the bills, son."

English Major:  "Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat."

Business Major: "What the... No, I'm serious.  You're gonna have to retire that book-reading shit when you get out of here.  Get rid of that stuff.  Read Forbes Global or CNN if you have to read something.

English Major:  (Warming to the point) "I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others uses!"

Business Major: "Whatever dude.  I'm out."

Exit

English Major:  (Whispers) "You Banbury cheese."

Note Honorary English Major David Tennant's expression; no-one better get in his way.

My own personal favorite literary insult is found in the last quarter of the immortal Watership Down .  This is a fantastic book for many reasons, one of which is the rabbit language, Lapine, sprinkled throughout.  There's even a glossary so you can look up what they're saying.  Many of us still geek out over this.

At the end of the book there's a war between two rabbit warrens and one of the good rabbits tells the evil rabbit warlord "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!"  Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Find great insults here at the Shakespeare Insults Dictionary.