Gossip

“ I might, however, differ from some as to what gossip is,—whether there may not be certain kinds of talk miscalled gossip. I am quite sure that criticising the misfortunes of others, and watching a chance for dilating upon their lot, with your neighbors on the next doorstep, would come under the head of worse than gossip. It might be well to distinguish between gossip and scandal: the one is goodness adulterated; the other is evil unmixed.
Good conversation is the mark of highest culture. ”

“ Gossip is the dialog of the drama of mankind; and we have a right to introduce any innocent and graceful means of thawing their stories from the actors, and of unraveling dramatic knots. People with keen judgment of men and things gather the harvest of a quiet eye; they see in the little world of private life histories as wonderful and issues as great as those that get our attention in literature, or in the theater, or in public life. Personal gossip in its intellectual form has a charm not unhealthy ”

“ Here we have in a nutshell the whole modus operandi of the gossip in all ages, and as he may be observed at any hour of the day or night, slimily engaged in his cowardly business. "Going to and fro in the earth, walking up and down in it," everywhere peering and listening, smiling and shrugging, here and there dropping a hint, sowing a seed, leering an innuendo ”

“ Just as you attempt, in your feeble way, to serve up the gossip of your little hamlet in your weekly paper, so I do; for I tell you in confidence what women want is not literature, not art, not science, but gossip. So I make all the great writers of the day write gossip for them. ”

“ Gossip may promote small-talk among those who are very intimate and who live in a narrow circle. But how profoundly uninteresting is it to an outsider!—how useless to the real man or woman of the world! ”

“ The good side of gossip arises out of that eager, seemingly insatiable curiosity which distinguishes men from the brutes and civilised men from savages. Much of our idlest chatter is secretly leavened by this curiosity, which is in its purest form a noble thing. ”

“ Our gossip and scandal is a grub, which in a hundred years’ time, with the advent of the historian, will become a chrysalis; and in four or five hundred years’ time, the hard shell will be burst open, and there will be seen the winged splendour of epic poetry or romantic drama. Have not all the subjects of history and epic poetry once been nothing more than eager talk in the court or the kitchen? ”

“ It may be said that much of the interest of biography, especially of the more familiar sort, is of the nature of gossip; as that of the MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR is of the nature of scandal, which is no doubt true. But both gossip and scandal illustrate the strength of the interest which men and women take in each other's personality; and which, exhibited in the form of biography, is capable of communicating the highest pleasure, and yielding the best instruction. ”

“ My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip.
Lord Windermere. What is the difference between scandal and gossip?
Cecil Graham. Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. ”

“ Those who are both poor, humble, and meek are seldom mentioned—since they do nothing to attract attention. They may be said to be philosophers. Gossip, stealthy as the incoming tide, sweeps wide; like the sea’s long, feathery fingers, it spreads with a rapidity that is amazing. Gossip runs riot in a village. ”

“ Does gossip, as it grows, disclose the hidden sin? Is it a reflex of the past, or does it invent evil and give it existence? Does it set its accursed seal upon an existent fault, or merely breed that which was yet not, and furnish the occasion for wrong? Should we call the slanderer infamous or severe? the accomplice or the divulger? the public avenger or the tempter? Does he arrest or precipitate our fall? wound through taste or duty? and when he condemns, is it from justice or from spite? Perhaps both, Don Julian. ”

“ Unfortunately, however, for us, the world is made up of our friends, as well as of those who are strangers to us; and in this world it is the malignant office of gossip to set afloat rumours of what is evil, rather than statements of what is good. ”

“ If a wind in playfulness does but shake a casement, or if in frolic it scatters the ashes across the hearth, or if in liveliness it swishes you as you turn a corner and drives you aslant across the street, is it right that you set your tongue to gossip and judge it a son of Belial? ”

“ Possibly none of the sweet gossips of the neighborhood saw much in the drama to point a moral, for, superficial as is the veil that covers deceit, it is rarely rent by the professional gossip, but rather by the hand that scorns all guile. ”

“ They mean all the gossip of the workroom, the whispered scandal, the mind soiled by all the filth that is talked; they mean lost chastity, foolish chatter, all the wretchedness of their everyday life, all the narrowness of ideas which belongs to women of the lower orders, combined to their fullest extent in the girl whose fingers bear the sacred marks of toil. ”

“ But I have been taught that gossip, whether inspired by malice or not, which is according to each one's natural tendency, begins in a lie and generally ends in truth. Does gossip, as it grows, disclose the hidden sin? ”

“ Dear girls, I plead for sincerity in speech. "Do not yield to the passion for miserable gossip which is so common. Talk about things, not people. Do not malign or backbite your absent friend. What is friendship worth if the moment the person is out of sight the tongue that has professed affection becomes a poisoned fang, and the lips which gave their warm kiss utter the word of ridicule, or sneer, or aspersion? Better be dumb than have the gift of speech to be used in the miserable idle words, insincerities, and backbitings too common in modern society. ”

“ Gentle and considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,—almost no habit is more vicious,—is acquired. [Pg 84] Such gossip can never become a pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable excitement. Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths. Even if they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash their mouths out with soap, they retain the disturbing memory of unkind, coarse, or foolish words. ”

“ An infinite amount of gossip goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a moment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used to smirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. ”

“ How many there are who love gossip and scandal; who always talk about people, and never about things—certainly not about things pure and lovely and of good report, but rather about things foul and ugly and of bad report; who do not talk, because they do not think of virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always finding fault with their neighbours. ”

“ Friendship, if true, has much to bear from the idle and mischievous gossip of society. Indeed, gossip may justly be considered as having destroyed more youthful attachments, than selfishness, falsehood, or vanity ”

“ If I leave the subject here, a thousand conjectures will at once seize upon you, and my name if not hers will become, before I know it, the football of gossip if not of worse and deeper suspicion than has yet assailed me. Gentleman I take you to be honest men ”

“ Now it seems to me that in this perpetual chatter about other people, which we all hasten to denounce, but which gives all of us pleasure at some time or other, our delight springs, broadly speaking, from two main sources, one of which is good and the other bad. And according to which predominates gossip may be described as profitable or hurtful to those people concerned in it. ”

“ Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. ​Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. ”

“ As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. ”

“ It is one's stoutest duty to convey colour and snippets of gossip of women, who, for the long winter months to come, are to remain in these wilds. You must understand that gossip is not wicked up North. ”

“ Sailors and shepherds, and the people generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it; and it is often excitingly presented in literature. But the tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street and market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort is still in a discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of gossip; heroic in virtue of its high pretensions; but still gossip, because it turns on personalities. You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen [11] at all, off moral or theological discussion. ”

“ Keen judgment which discovers the fundamental distinction between scandal and suitable personality in talk raises gossip to the perfection of an art and the dignity of a science. Undiscriminating people, therefore, had bet [75] ter leave personalities alone and stick to the more general and less resilient topics of conversation. Good gossip is attainable only by minds that are capable of much higher talk than gossip. Cultivated, well-poised, well-disposed persons need never be afraid of indulging their conversation to a certain extent with gossip, because they indulge it in the right way. ”

“ I have myself been cured of any shackling anxiety as to "What will people say?" by a long experience of the fact, that the remarks of the gossip are totally irrespective of the conduct or the conversation they gossip over. That which is blamed one moment, is highly extolled the next, when the necessity of depreciating contrast requires the change ”

“ He was a man, it is clear, of a curiously naïve and garrulous temper, a born lover of gossip, even when he was gossiping only of and to himself, and when some of the matters he found to talk about did not by any means redound to his credit. ”

“ Society lives by gossip as it lives by bread. The most absurd rule [82] in the world is to avoid personalities in conversation. To annihilate gossip would be to cut conversational topics in half. There is musical gossip, art gossip, theatrical gossip, literary gossip, and court gossip; there is political gossip, and fashionable gossip, and military gossip; there is mercantile gossip and commercial gossip of all kinds; there is physicians' gossip and professional gossip of every sort; there is scientists' gossip ”

“ We are aware of the present vogue of gossip in the journalism of the day, and that no estimate of a great man's career is now considered entertaining without the vulgar spice of inquiry into his private life. ”

“ All personal gossip is interesting, and all of us like to know something of the men whom we hear talked of day by day, and whose works have delighted or instructed us; how they dressed, talked, or walked, and amused themselves ”

“ But everybody who has touched their history since, and there have been many—for it would seem that gossip, when restrained by no bonds of decorum or human feeling, possesses a certain interest whether it is concerned with the household of a cardinal or that of a parish priest—has followed the same vicious way without any remonstrance or appeal for mercy. ”

“ Have we not abundant instances about us of the vulgar tittle-tattle and scandalous unfounded gossip which, born Heaven alone knows on what back-stairs or in what servants’ hall, circulates currently to the detriment of the distinguished in every walk of life? ”

“ For human beings this means words, and, while we dignify our own speech over our tobacco by the name of conversation, we are apt to dispose of that of the ladies round a tea-table by labelling it gossip. ”

“ The thoughts of the gossip, so the [73] psychologists tell us, have connection but not coherence; the thoughts of the genius have coherence and likewise connection and unity. Thus we discover that scandal-mongers are at fault in the mind more than in the heart; and that it behooves people who do not wish to have themselves voted mentally defective to draw a distinction between scandal and innocent gossip. As I have already said, there is nothing so interesting as the dramatic incidents in the lives of human beings. ”

“ If a chance turns up of doing something—so much the better; and if it doesn't turn up—at least one will be glad one didn't gossip idly about it beforehand.'
'You call a friendly conversation idle gossip?... Or perhaps you consider me as a woman unworthy of your confidence? ”

“ It was indeed curious, though ridiculous, to observe that, even among these simple people, and in this obscure corner of the globe, that little gossip and scandal so commonly practised in small societies among us were very frequently displayed. ”

“ Talk and think as little as possible of others' faults; he who is above doing a low act is above talking about another's failings. The only right gossip is that which dwells upon the pleasant side of our neighbors' doings. ”

“ So you see that the head and front of Bell’s villainy was that he was a little man with an abnormal capacity for gossip. If gossip, then, be a gallows 39matter, let Bell unbutton him for the end. On the contrary, if gossip be but a trifle, here were a case for clement judgment.
In the first place, there is no vice of necessity in gossip. This must be clearly understood. It is proximity in time and place that makes it intolerable. A gossip next door may be a nuisance. A gossip in history may be delightful. ”