Scandal monger

“ In the absence of graver interests society naturally bestows inordinate attention on the private affairs of its members; and quarrelling, backbiting, and scandal-mongery help indolent people to kill the time that hangs heavily on their hands. ”

“ His voice had a quaver. He was explaining as he would explain to a child. “All the timber interests are behind me. See what it means if I am turned down? A scandal would do it. It’s the petty scandal that kills a man in this State quicker than anything else—scandal or a laugh! I can’t carry that girl out of the woods and declare her to be my daughter. ”

“ Scandal is the prime executioner; when scandal strikes it lays the naked truth bare to the bone—stark, hideous, undeniable. It takes a brave woman to stand firm in the face of scandal. Some totter and fall at the first blow; others struggle to their feet and survive. ”

“ Multiply individuals in the true sense, and scandal mongering will just proportionately decline, while the scum-gathering which now forms so large a part of what is called "journalistic enterprise" will become a neglected and dishonored art. ”

“ So now that the scandal has been well aired and hung out to dry in the teeth of decency and the four winds, and as all the details have been cheerfully and grossly exaggerated, it is, perhaps, the proper moment for the truth to be written by the only person whose knowledge of all the facts in the affair entitles him to speak for himself as well as for those honorable ladies and gentlemen whose names and titles have been so mercilessly criticised. ”

“ Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man—now they crush him. And yours is a very nasty scandal. You couldn’t survive it. If it were known that as a young man, secretary to a great and important minister, you sold a Cabinet secret for a large sum of money, and that that was the origin of your wealth and career, you would be hounded out of public life, you would disappear completely. And after all, Sir Robert, why should you sacrifice your entire future rather than deal diplomatically with your enemy? ”

“ It will make a scandal, all the tongues in the country will be wagging about it, but it is better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life. ”

“ Scandal is one of the crimes of the tongue, but it is only one. Every individual who breathes a word of scandal is an active stockholder in a society for the spread of moral contagion. He is instantly punished by Nature by having his mental eyes dimmed to sweetness and purity, and his mind deadened to the sunlight and glow of charity. ”

“ If you had said she was having an intrigue, say, with the Emperor of Russia, it would have hurt nobody, not even the Emperor. Never mind, dear, the thing is done. We must consider how we can make the best of it. A scandal is always a dangerous thing to touch. If one denies it afterwards, if even the inventor, who believes it to be true—how ridiculous, too, of you, dear Mildred!—denies it, there will always be people who think that the denial merely confirms it. ”

“ It does not pretend to know the whole, or naked body of the facts; it knows enough for its furry dubiousness; and excepting the sentimental of men, a rocket-headed horde, ever at the heels of fair faces for ignition, and up starring away at a hint of tearfulness; excepting further by chance a solid champion man, or some generous woman capable of faith in the pelted solitary of her sex, our temporary world blows direct East on her shivering person. The scandal is warrant for that; the circumstances of the scandal emphasize the warrant. ”

“ Not I, but every man in the land who keeps the run of current news answers that the perpetrators are at large, and are turning up every moment to do the same thing without being arrested, tried and punished. Has the power of the government been rigorously exerted to arrest this disgraceful scandal? ”

“ The public does not want truth,—what they want is a scandal—a libellous slander on men of rank, men of note like myself. The vulgar world is never so happy as when it assumes to cancel great public services by some contemptible private scandal. Lord Culduff has checkmated the Russian Ambassador. ”

“ The lie was probably started by some woman who envied me. But a scandal is like a snowball—it increases as it is rolled along. We invited gossip, and lent colour to the report by being seen so much together. I know it too well, and I have regretted it bitterly for your sake. With a public man like yourself a scandal is very apt to put an end for ever to all chances of high position. Knowing that, I, too, tried hard to cut myself adrift from you. Ah! you cannot know, Dudley, what I suffered when I attempted self-sacrifice for your own dear sake. ”

“ The more their scandalous conduct brands them on the forehead, the more they cry out against scandal. Their whole life is bemired with vice, and their mouth articulates no other words than prudence and virtue, like those corrupt and infected doctors who have no indulgence for their patients. ”

“ These who assemble about them such billowy mobs, we are tempted to think that they are the leading spirits, that a vast power must live in them, since they are so able to move inert men. But another prophet, modern also, has said to these bawlers in market places: “Do you think that he who stirs up scandal moves the world?” Nothing easier than to start a scandal! Also, nothing jollier for numerous men, to say nothing of women. ”

“ Nothing at times so startles us as our own words. As the girl uttered the word "scandal," she rose frightened as though it faced her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward. Scandal had never touched her life. She had never talked scandal; had never thought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence. ”

“ But of two evils is it not the wisest maxim to choose the least? and is it not a smaller evil to amuse ourselves at cards, than, as is often the case at evening parties, to play at scandal and defame the reputation of others? ”

“ There, Monsieur Bergeret, you put your finger189 on the weak point; there you make the void to echo. The public is becoming used to the spectacle of wrong-doing and is losing the power to discriminate between good and evil. That’s where the danger lies. Now one public scandal after another arises, only to be at once hushed up. Under the Monarchy and the Empire there was such a thing as public opinion; there is none to-day. ”

“ And this you did, not from a misguided sense of duty towards your country, but in wanton and impure spirit, to be rid of the surveillance of one who had your welfare at heart, and who tried to prevent your leading the immoral life which had become a public scandal, and which has now brought you before this court of justice, to answer to a charge of wantonness, impurity, defamation of character, and corruption of public morals. ”

“ To hear of a scandal, to be convinced of it is as nothing to seeing it. That comes like an exposure, an indecency, a slap in the face. The Ambassador was furious with disgust. He stormed into the room: "Can I believe my eyes? Are you both lost to common sense? Is this your discretion, Mrs. Enslee? Do you realize where you are?"
Persis toppled out of Forbes' relaxed embrace, and spoke from a daze: "No—I forgot—I must be out of my mind."
Forbes came to her defense: "You mustn't blame her. ”

“ Scandal was the breath of her life; to place people in false positions, to divulge secrets and destroy characters, to undermine friendships, and aggravate enmities—these were the sources of enjoyment from which this dangerous woman drew the inexhaustible fund of good spirits that made her a brilliant light in the social sphere. She was one of the privileged sinners of modern society. ”

“ When I observe how strong is our propensity for scandal, and with what greediness evil-speaking is listened to, I cannot help wishing that there were such a tribunal in every one's bosom. Did it exist, or rather did we suffer the voice which there speaks, to be heard; we should often be humbled at its decisions. If we unmask our actions and our motives, we shall find this propensity at the bottom of much of what is called—virtuous indignation. At one time, it assumes the mock appearance of charity ”

“ Cunning malice, destructive backbiting, scandal set on foot by inconsiderate comments on trivial acts, often meaningless and that might well have been left unnoticed, open jealousy, absurd vanity, the most insidious intrigues to work up to distinction ”

“ Brave men would act, though scandal should ensue. ”

“ Are you not aware that no falsehood is too gross nor too barefaced not to meet credence if she be its object? Do not all they who plan the downfall of the monarchy despair of success while her graceful virtues adorn her high station? Is not every effort of the vile faction directed solely against her? Have you not witnessed how, one by one, have been abandoned all the innocent pleasures to which scandal attached a blame. ”

“ Has Providence raised this country from the dead only to be dizzied in a whirlpool of scandal, hypocrisy, and fraud—only to fall a prey to an infamous traffic without a name between high officials of low desires and women whose reputations are long since lost? It is men and women like these who destroy their country for their own selfish ends. ”

“ The 'squire's portrait being found united with ours, was an honor too great to escape envy. Scandalous whispers began to circulate at our expense, and our tranquillity was continually disturbed by persons who came as friends to tell us what was said of us by enemies. These reports we always resented with becoming spirit; but scandal ever improves by opposition. ”

“ The worst evil resulting from the indiscriminate attack of an unscrupulous press upon men in public station is not that innocence suffers, but that crime escapes. Let scandal and malice be encountered by pure and stainless lives. Let corruption and bribery meet their lawful punishment.
"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. ”

“ I cannot sufficiently express the indignation that I feel against the mischievous spirit of scandal, which destroys happiness at every breath, and which delights in the meanest of all malignant feelings—the triumph over the errors of superior characters. ”

“ There are certain things that are never said at all, certain allusions that are never made. There are no light stories, no propos risqués. I don’t know exactly what people talk about, for the supply of scandal is small, and it’s poor in quality. ”

“ BEERMANN. God knows, it is not the business of the police to provoke this enormous scandal. All authority will be destroyed. It will shatter the respect of the masses for the people higher up.
STROEBEL. But this scandal was provoked— [knocking on the diary with his finger] —by these very people.
BEERMANN. If a man once in a while goes into a certain room—that is no scandal. It only becomes a scandal when the story is made known to every Tom, Dick and Harry. That's what must be prevented! ”

“ If they start another scandal at this moment, it would be fatal to all your Majesty’s interests; for I fear that even the people, faithful to your cause up to the present, would then turn against you. ”

“ Varga so much sweat and anguish, would be brought forth, and then they would sit down together and talk scandal of their neighbours, and a delightful joke it was too.
For there's a difference between scandal and scandal. To circulate false reports of the people you know, to lay hold upon their most recondite faults and carefully pass them on from hand to hand, to undermine the good name of your acquaintances,—that is certainly not a nice occupation, I call it ungentlemanly scandal. But to be acquainted with the vices of the world, and communicate them to innocent souls liable to err ”

“ It must draw the public eye by openly avowing a suspicion of malfeasance, and must then magnify and intensify the scandal by setting its Committees to cross-examining scared subordinates and sulky ministers. And after all is over and the murder out, probably nothing is done. The offenders, if any one has offended, often remain in office, shamed before the world, and ruined in the estimation of all honest people, but still drawing their salaries and comfortably waiting for the short memory of the public mind to forget them. ”

“ There is good evidence that the amount of immorality among what are known as the higher classes is every year increasing. Every now and then a scandal in high life comes to the surface; but the great mass of corruption is effectually hidden from the general public. ”

“ I say, the scandal, first, of imitation. Men always willingly copy after evil, but more especially when held out by great examples; they then ground a kind of vanity upon their errors, because it is through these that they resemble you. The people consider it as giving them an air of consequence to tread in your steps. The city thinks it an honour to adopt all the vices of the court. Your manners form a poison which penetrates even into the provinces ”

“ The incident is suggestive, however, of what may have happened in the case of other men who desired to be honest politically but were handicapped by the fear of some forgotten scandal, perhaps of a purely personal character, in their past lives. ”