The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

"Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth" (45).

"...on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was much about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons" (105).

"...at the very moment that Arthur said, 'I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style,' a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time . . . and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually, of course, after their galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake . . . For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across--which happened to be Earth--where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog" (129).