Rumor

“ It would seem to me so impossible to use that power to echo the faintest rumor adverse to a woman, or to keep cowardly silence in the shrugging, sneering, slanderer’s presence, when a bold word of mine for the cause of right, might close his dastard lips. ”

“ Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. Vanderlip bases his Gags on Rumor.
Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don’t stay put as long as Truth. ”

“ Every sensational rumor derogatory to their character has been seized upon with avidity and published without reserve, while the correction of the mis-statements or the vindication of their character has seldom struggled through the columns of the press to the public eye. ”

“ In the two instances given above, fear, suspicion, hatred, give rise in one case to a delusional system in the mind of an isolated individual, and in the other to the circulation of an unfounded rumor by men who in their right minds would, to say the least, carefully scrutinize the evidence for such a story before permitting it to be published. ”

“ Meanwhile rumor, which always thrives in proportion to ignorance, might make their lives miserable by reports of a riderless horse seen galloping into some village, of storms and gales, or of trees crashing across the lonely roads. ”

“ Coming events cast their rumors before. From a careful study of rumors the discerning may learn a good deal, providing always that they never take them at face value but try to read beneath the surface. People sometimes criticize the newspapers for printing rumors, but it is an essential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly mark them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of men with false reports," yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is in the ear that hears it. ”

“ We have to accept rumors concerning them, we have to know them through the variously colored accounts of others; we can seldom test our impressions of their sincerity by standing with them face to face. ”

“ These rumors could not be traced to any particular source, but there are always a certain number of persons who delight to circulate such stories, and, perhaps, add a little to the same with each and every additional telling, until a trivial happening becomes a colossal thing. ”

“ Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are any more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; and rumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat and haste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right. ”

“ You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage. ”

“ but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. ”

“ We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come. ”

“ What will it profit me when far away, though you endeavour to vindicate me and to silence such a calumny? Will not your unwonted lenity, your present preposterous supineness, make the detestable rumour wear a look of the utmost speciousness, nay, of irrefragable truth? ”

“ It is certain to be a man. Have you no suspicion?’
He could hear the grate of her teeth as she breathed heavily and rapidly through her nostrils.
‘Suspicion!’ she cried, after some inarticulate sounds. ‘How am I to know? A lie—it is for any one—what is easier? A scullion—Caesar—any one can make a lie! It is another matter to discover it—the coward!’
‘Who?’ demanded Afer, starting at the fierce intensity of the epithet.
‘The coward—the liar, whoever he may be.’
‘Humph, that is true; if we could only find him out.’
He looked at her with a sidelong glance. ”

“ Rumour hurts many, and a lying slander often harms. A little word deceives the thoughts of common men. Respect thy grandsires, honour thy fathers, forget not thy parents, value thy forefathers; let thy flesh and blood keep its fame. What madness came on thee? And thou, shameless smith, what fate drove thee in thy lust to attempt a high-born race? ”

“ Now that I know them all to be blotted out, and that I am an accepted person, I may the more freely confess them: the truth is, that one lie always paved the way for another, from hour to hour, from day to day, and from year to year ”

“ When you tell your first lie, bring it to me."
"I don't dare to tell lies, sir; mother says God hates liars; but 'those that speak the truth are his delight.'"
[39]
"That's true doctrine; and here we are." ”

“ 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? ”

“ It is almost impossible to learn the genesis of a rumour. It may be started by a look, a word, a gesture, and it spreads with such marvellous rapidity that by the time public curiosity is fully aroused, no one can trace the original source, so many and winding are the channels through which it has flowed. ”

“ We are far from saying that any rumour expressed in the terms we have used, was circulating in Mrs. Horton’s bar-room; but one that contained all their essentials was. It is one of the curious effects of the upward tendency of truth that almost every effort to conceal it altogether fails; and this at the very time when idle and heartless gossip is filling the world with lies. The tongue does a thousand times more evil than the sword; destroys more happiness, inflicts more incurable wounds, leaves deeper 319and more indelible scars. Truth is rarely met with unalloyed by falsehood. ”

“ The king replied: 'Your Honour ought not to leave us on account of a mere rumour. The worth of persons like you does not depend on public opinion, [169] nor do they acquire their illustrious virtues nor lose them conformably to idle gossip.
17. 'Rumour is the result of unrestrained imagination. Once abroad, it runs about free and unchecked. Ridiculous is he who in earnest minds such gossip, more ridiculous is he who acts up to it!'
The Bodhisattva said: 'No, no, Your Majesty; do not speak so! A high opinion of men must be acted up to. Will Your Majesty deign to consider this. ”

“ It is in Silence we hear the voice of Truth. The temples and the marts of men echo all night and day to the clamour of lies and shams and quackeries. But in Silence falsehood cannot live. You cannot float a lie on Silence. A lie has to be puffed aloft, and kept from falling by men’s breath. ”

“ Strict veracity requires something more than merely the speaking of truth. There are lying looks as well as lying words; dissembling smiles, deceiving signs, and even a lying silence. Not to intend what you speak is to give your heart the lie with your tongue; and not to perform what you promise is to give your tongue the lie with your actions. Deception exhibits itself in many forms—in reticency on the one hand or exaggeration on the other; in disguise or concealment ”

“ LI. What can be more obnoxious to urbanity than lying? What man of understanding is there whom it does not offend? Or to whom is it not disgusting? and how can deceit cease to be injurious? All the utility, all the delight that can be obtained by conversation, is destroyed by a lie. If he, with whom I converse, tells me lies, of what service will the information I receive from him be to me? ”

“ A delicate sentiment is rendered with the rapidity of lightning. Love, fear, hope, and despair, change countenances, and say every thing that they wish to say, void of deceit, as if falsehood no longer existed as soon as the mouth ceased to open. ”

“ The lie it was drawing me by is perhaps Spring's oldest, commonest lie,—the lying promise of the Perfect Woman, the Quite Impossible She. Who has not dreamed of her,—who that can dream at all? I suppose that the dreams of our modern youth are entirely commercial. ”

“ That is the figure of speech called lying, because there is to be nothing but deception from beginning to end. Did you ever consider the nature of a lie, Unorna? It is a very interesting subject.”
“I thought you were going to make love to me.”
“True; how easily one forgets those little things! And yet no woman ever forgave a man who forgot to make love when she expected him to do so. ”

“ It should be pointed out to them with continual earnestness that the essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence ”

“ You, dear sir, should not suspect the truth of what I say of you, though to you. Fame, the old liar, is believed when she speaks wonders of you: you cannot be flattered, sir, your merit is unspeakable. ”

“ The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie—heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, vice versâ, veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion—that is the truth which makes love possible and mankind happy. ”

“ This romantic young philanthropist talks of fibbing, as if it were the most simple thing in life. No, Mademoiselle, we lawyers never fib. If we are ever obliged to forsake the narrow pathway of truth, we tell a square, honest lie. ”

“ Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. ”

“ 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 ”

“ For a lie to blast a man’s whole life, for a lie to brand him. Stealthily, as if his very stirring might incense the devil-god of such a world, he slid down, sitting beside the bed, his distended, horror-fascinated eyes hard on the wall. ”

“ Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur'd I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie.! ”

“ STORY, a falsehood,—the soft synonyme for a lie, allowed in family circles and boarding-schools. A Puritanism that came in fashion with the tirade against romances, all novels and stories being considered as dangerous and false. ”

“ And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie; for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood. ”

“ The spirit of these walls?" -- "In truth not I."
"Why Fame -- but Fame you know's sometimes a liar --
Tells an odd story, of which by and by:
Whether with time the spectre has grown shyer,
Or that our sires had a more gifted eye
For such sights, though the tale is half believed,
The friar of late has not been oft perceived. ”

“ Is one to tell her that one loves her? Obviously, there is danger in such assurances, and beside, one usually doesn't, and a lie is a lie. Or is one to descend to chatty commonplaces—about the weather, literature, politics, the war? ”

“ As for me, I’m tired of being called ‘truthful George’: it calls for such plain language that somebody’s feelings are sure to be singed. What’s the use of telling the truth when a lie is so much more believable and—interesting?”
Being busily engaged in writing a letter to the city editor of the New York Universe, I did not notice that the blare of the megaphone had ceased. ”

“ Falsehood abides permanently in their mouth like artificial teeth and corruption lurks beneath the whited sepulchres of their shirt-fronts. They adore us in secret and deride us when they are together. ”

“ But through all the man’s doubts, fears, and perplexities, a certain whisper, say rather, an uncertain rumour, a vague legendary murmur, has been at the same time about, rather than in, his ears—never ceasing to haunt his air, although hitherto he has hardly heeded it. ”

“ Tell him the truth—now in the silence—now in the gathering darkness, with the evening shadows hiding your shame from him, with the night concealing his anguish from you—take courage and begin—be honest and be true. ”

“ I had discovered that hearsay, unless softened down by the admixture of a large grain of salt, should not be taken as truth, and that what is ordinarily called romance, resolves itself, upon actual acquaintance, into the least attractive forms of villainy, immorality, extortion, and dirt. ”

“ Where this rumour originates no one knows; how it spreads, or how much truth it may contain, is alike uncertain; only one thing seems pretty clear, which is, that something has happened even worse than the daily accidents of colliery life ”