gossip

I never gossip - but after all, a tongue is given one to speak with, and I'm not deaf mute.That you most certainly are not. A tongue, Henet, may sometimes be a weapon. A tongue may cause a death - may cause more than one death. I hope your tongue, Henet, has not caused a death.

Persons of quality had devoted yester evening and much of the night to liquidating their holdings in the South Sea Company and gathering in clubs and coffeehouses to misinform one another.

If only gossip weren't so titillating. Sweeney tried to control an avid desire to know more, to dig for all the dirty details.The temptation was great. Dirt was like fat; it made life more delicious.

When you meet new people and you notice they gossip about people behind their backs just imagine what they say about you behind yours.

Knowing themselves to be faultless, they make it their mission to detect the myriad faults in others, against which they wage incessant tongue.

For acting thus you will remain innocent among the hissings of the serpents, and like a sweet strawberry you will receive no venom from the contact of venomous tongues.

These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.

You could never prove innocence, not in the match with the man who only had to imply guilt.

A knife wound heals, but a tongue wound festers.

The only reason for the many unknown excuses I had to make up to get out of the parties, school reunions, fake get together, informal office meetings was that I didn__ like __ossiping_.

8 April 1891The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!

There isn't no call to go talking of pushing and pulling. Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking for further for the cause of trouble.

I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else's private business was considered perfectly routine.

Rumour is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjecturesAnd of so easy and so plain a stopThat the blunt monster with uncounted heads,The still-discordant wavering multitude,Can play upon it.

Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.

Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words.

A good word will spread in the grapevine, bringing forth clusters of grapes and the benevolent of wine; a bad word will spread withering the vines, and choke the potential grapes.

The news is glorified gossip.