Gossiping

“ There is another kind of conversation which may not be ill-natured and yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of which we know little or nothing. ”

“ Sometimes people have attributed to women the habit of gossiping, but the idle men, who sit on the sidewalks of the small towns or tilt back in the yellow round-back chairs on the hotel verandas, can blacken more characters to the hour than any other class of human beings. ”

“ Consequently, in the event of your now abruptly breaking off with her, and discontinuing your visits, you will occasion the young lady herself much unmerited grief and humiliation, you'll set busy-bodies far and wide to gossiping, and you'll bring no end of odium down upon yourself. ”

“ But, just to please me, come without saying a word to anyone. Nobody need know that you are on a visit to your former wife, need they? We are free to follow our own fancies, but there is no need to set people gossiping. ”

“ Gossiping.—If you wish to cultivate a gossiping, meddling, censorious spirit in your children, be sure when they come home from church, a visit, or any other place where you do not accompany them, to ply them with questions concerning what everybody wore, how everybody looked, and what everybody said and did ”

“ Pry's gossiping, who is in her lady's secrets, have got it so strongly into their heads, that if you but pick up the young lady's glove when she drops it, they think you are putting a ring on her finger. ”

“ There are endless subjects—the books we read, the plays we see, pictures over which we argue, music of which I know nothing, and people, the most absorbing of all, probably because gossiping is a reprehensible practise. There is nothing I enjoy [Pg 62] more. If I hadn’t been so well brought up I would be like the women in the first act of The School for Scandal. Sometimes we make little retrospective journeys into the past. But we do this cautiously. There are five years we neither of us care to touch on, so we talk forward by preference.
Of course I had to tell Roger of Miss Harris and Mr. ”

“ A young woman ought to learn the duties and pleasures of housekeeping as soon after marriage as possible. If she boards out, she has little to occupy her time, and is apt to pass her days in reading silly novels, or to fall into that terrible habit of gossiping. She ought to find pleasure in working for her husband, and she can work for him best only in her own home, preparing his meals and by the performance of other wifely duties. ”

“ Ned. Harry, never marry a chambermaid, for they bring nothing with them but a few old clothes of their mistresses, and for house-keeping, few of them knows any thing of it; for they can hardly make a pudding or a pye, neither can they spin, nor knit, nor wash, except it be a few laces to make themselves fine withal.
Harry. What would she be at?
Ned. Why, always a gossiping, there is such a company of them in our street, that there's never a day but some or other of them meet together. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Art, literature, politics, are to cease to interest you. You are to scheme to surprise gossip about the private lives, dress, and talk of artists, men of letters, politicians. Your professional work will sink below the level of servants’ gossip in a public-house parlour. If you happen to meet a man of known name, you will watch him, will listen to him, will try to sneak into his confidence, and you will blab, for money, about him, and your blab will inevitably be mendacious. In short, like the most pitiable outcasts of womankind, and, without their excuse, you will live by selling your honour. ”

“ 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 ”

“ If we delight in gossip, and are not content unless each neighbor is laid upon the dissecting table, we form a character unenviable indeed, and must be willing to bear the contempt of all the truly good, while we roll our bit of scandal as a sweet morsel under the tongue. ”

“ A great deal of good sermonizing, by the by, is expended on gossip, which is denounced as one of the seven deadly sins of society; but, after all, gossip has its better side: if not a Christian grace, it certainly is one of those weeds which show a good warm soil.
The kindly heart, that really cares for everything human [Pg 15] it meets, inclines toward gossip, in a good way. Just as a morning glory throws out tendrils, and climbs up and peeps cheerily into your window, so a kindly gossip can't help watching the opening and shutting of your blinds and the curling smoke from your chimney. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I suppose you have no servant girls and no gossip where you are: the absence of effect depending on the want of cause. Happy heaven! and yet I believe that there are people on this earth who really enjoy being the subject of gossip. To them the suggestions of scandal are as the savour of salt, as danger is to the sportsman; the wilder the suggestion, the more amusing the game; and there are even those who, when tattle wanes and desire fails, say or insinuate, to their own detriment, the thing that is not, rather than disappear into obscurity. ”

“ One can interest one's self in the dramatic incidents in the lives of one's acquaintances without ventilating or vilifying their character. Gossip is capable of a more genial purpose than traducing people. It is the malignity which turns gossip into scandal against which temperate conversationalists revolt ”

“ As a matter of fact, not one-tenth part of the most cruel of all gossip—the gossip of country-houses—is worthy of credence; and although, when I first made Madame’s acquaintance, she had living with her in the house a clerk named Mitusha, who had been promoted from a serf, and who, curled, pomaded, and dressed in a frockcoat of Circassian pattern, always stood behind his mistress’s chair at luncheon, while from time to time she invited her guests to admire his handsome eyes and mouth, there was nothing for gossip to take hold of. ”

“ There are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they're both good ways. One is not to listen to it, and the other is not to repeat it. Then there's young Buck Pudden's wife's way, and that's better than either, when you're dealing with some of these old heifers who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud and slobber fake sympathy over you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But this is scandal, not gossip, and scandal comes from people incapable of anything better either in mind or conversation. Among those who understand the art of conversation, libelous talk is rarely heard; with those who cultivate it to perfection, never. It is the first commandment of the slanderer to repeat promptly all the vitriolic talk he hears, but to keep strictly to himself all pleasant words or kindly gossip. Those who draw no distinction between scandal and gossip should reflect that gossip may be good-natured and commenda [71] tory as well as hostile and adverse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”