Slanderer

“ I said to him, coldly, "but learn from me that a wise man who has heard a criminal accusation related with so many absurd particulars ceases to be wise when he makes himself the echo of what he has heard, for if the accusation should turn out to be a calumny, he would himself become the accomplice of the slanderer." ”

“ I would have said that the tongue of the slanderer is a devouring fire which tarnishes whatever it touches; which exercises its fury on the good grain, equally as on the chaff; on the profane, as on the sacred; which, wherever it passes, leaves only desolation and ruin; digs even into the bowels of the earth, and fixes itself on things the most hidden; turns into vile ashes what only a moment before had appeared to us so precious and brilliant; acts with more violence and danger than ever in the time when it was apparently smothered up and almost extinct ”

“ Incurable are the wounds which the slanderer inflicteth, irreparable the damages which he causeth, indelible the marks which he leaveth. “No balsam can heal the biting of a sycophant;” no thread can stitch up a good name torn by calumnious defamation; no soap is able to cleanse from the stains aspersed by a foul mouth. Aliquid adhærebit; somewhat always of suspicion and ill opinion will stick in the minds of those who have given ear to slander. So extremely opposite is this practice unto the queen of virtues, Charity. ”

“ A slanderer causes one to demand of every action at least its passport,—one does it merely to effect a most patent refutation of the slanderer,—and as, often, the most innocent act has no certificate of health, one shakes one's head and says, It is a real calumny, but then I will still be on the watch. ”

“ The slanderer therefore doth engage himself into great straits, incurring an obligation to repair an almost irreparable mischief.
Ninthly, this practice doth also certainly revenge itself, imposing on its actor a perfect retaliation; “a tooth for a tooth;” an irrecoverable infamy to himself, for the infamy he causeth to others. Who will regard his fame, who will be concerned to excuse his faults, who so outrageously abuseth the reputation of others? He suffereth justly, he is paid in his own coin, will any man think, who doth hear him reproached. ”

“ For while thou revilest the Greeks, thou dost encourage the King to lead his own troops against them; and this, as it seems to me, is what thou art specially striving to accomplish. Heaven send thou succeed not to thy wish! For slander is of all evils the most terrible. In it two men do wrong, and one man has wrong done to him. The slanderer does wrong, forasmuch as he abuses a man behind his back ”

“ It will be as well for you not to imagine yourself of so great importance in the world, and others of such insignificance. Be not high-minded, but fear. It is generally from an eminence of self-importance that the slanderer speaks of those who occupy a position of real and given eminence. If he would step down from that cloudy pedestal, and occupy his own place, he would probably think less of himself and more of others.
[Pg 110] 8. Give no countenance to the slanderer. Keep your patronage for some one of nobler worth: some one more generous and charitable, more philanthropic and Christian. ”

“ If they as grievously feel it, and resent it as deeply, as they do any other outrage, the injury is really as great, to them. Even the slanderer’s own judgment and conscience might tell him so much; for they who most slight another’s fame, are usually very tender of their own, and can with no patience endure that others should touch it; which demonstrates the inconsiderateness of their judgment, and the iniquity of their practice. It is an injustice not to be corrected or cured. ”

“ An artist once painted a picture of the human tongue in a way to represent his conception of how the “tongue of slander” should appear. It was long, coiled like a serpent, tapering at the end into a barbed spear point; from each of the papilla, scarcely visible, was a needle point, from which oozed a green, slimy poison. The slandering tongue is “a fire, a world of iniquity—it defileth the whole body—it is set on fire of hell.”
The slanderer is no respecter of persons; he rakes and scrapes the uttermost parts of the earth for victims: king and peasant, rich and poor, priest and prophet ”

“ Such a person is the slanderer's herald, and is altogether more odious than the slanderer himself. By this vile officiousness he makes that poison effective which else would be inert; for three-fourths of the slanderers in the world would never injure their object except by the malice of go-betweens, who, under the mask of a double friendship, act the part of a double traitor. The less business a man has of his own, the more he attends to the business of his neighbors. ”

“ How public men are slandered in this country! None escape, whether good or bad. Judgment is passed upon them, their family, their character, by the press and by individuals who know little or nothing about them. If one tenth that is said and written about our public men was true, half of them should be hung. Slander has been called “tongue murder.” Slanderers are compared to flies that always settle on sores, but do not touch a man’s good parts. ”

“ The slanderer is plainly a fool, because he maketh wrong judgments and valuations of things, and accordingly driveth on silly bargains for himself, in result whereof he proveth a great loser. He means by his calumnious stories either to vent some passion boiling in him, or to compass some design which he affects, or to please some humour that he is possessed with: but is any of these things worth purchasing at so dear a rate? can there be any valuable exchange for our honesty? ”

“ Certainly madam—that conversation where the Spirit of Raillery is suppressed will ever appear tedious and insipid— MARIA.
Well I'll not debate how far Scandal may be allowable— but in a man I am sure it is always contemtable.—We have Pride, envy, Rivalship, and a Thousand motives to depreciate each other— but the male-slanderer must have the cowardice of a woman before He can traduce one. ”

“ The mode of restoring the injured reputation of another will vary according to circumstances. If no other way presents itself, the slanderer must say that he spoke falsely, for the reputation of the innocent is of more consequence than that of the guilty. ”

“ His readers do not know that he is without character. It would be useless to prosecute him. If he would even fight there would be some satisfaction in that; but a slanderer is likely to be a coward as well. ”

“ And let me add that the apocryphal slanderer, the person who never says but hints all sorts of malicious things, is the worst sort of scandal-monger. The cultivated conversationalist who talks gossip in its intellectual form does not indulge in oblique hints and insinuations. ”

“ The slanderer is a fool, as bringing many great inconveniences and troubles upon himself. (1.) By no means can a man inflame so fierce anger, impress so stiff hatred, raise so deadly enmity against himself, and consequently so endanger his safety, ease, and welfare as by this practice. Men will rather pardon a robber of their goods than of their good name. ”

“ Tenthly, in fine, the slanderer, if he doth not, by serious and sore repentance retract his practice, doth banish himself from heaven and happiness, doth expose himself to endless miseries and sorrows. ”

“ It is a saying worthy to be written in letters as big as those on a monument, that silence never harmed any one: and let it not be imagined that those slanderers who never speak well of others, but are always cutting and stinging, and pinching and biting, ever gain anything by their malice; for when the bags come to be shaken out, it has always been seen, and is so still, that whilst a good word gains love and profit, slander brings enmity and ruin ”

“ The highest manifestation of this talker in regard [Pg 103] to men consists in bearing false witness against a neighbour; charging him with things of which he is not guilty: as in the case of those who said, “Naboth did blaspheme God and the king,” when he had not done so. Thus did the slanderer speak against David: “False witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty;” “They laid things to my charge that I knew not.” A second manifestation of slander is the application to persons of epithets and phrases which they do not deserve. ”

“ Is it manly to follow me with studied insult? I can bear the hatred of fools. Contempt I have not deserved. Dead! I should be dead, if my conscience had once reproached me. I am a mark for slander, and brave men should beware of herding with despicable slanderers. ”

“ Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile; depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it."
The first condition for a long life is, "keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile." But the question arises, in what sense can the violation of that condition have any effect upon the length of life? The answer is at hand—the slanderer is ever a busy body in other men's matters. He is secretly endeavoring to injure his neighbors. ”

“ In conclusion, a few suggestions may be given, which, if taken, may assist in the cure or prevention of this evil disease of the tongue.
1. Consider well the ninth commandment of the Decalogue, which requires you not to bear false witness against your neighbour.
2. Abstain from the company of slanderers. “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” Slandering is contagious. Slanderers help one another. Prefer being alone, or seek that company in which the slanderer is not admitted.
3. Do not interfere in the affairs of other people, when they do not concern you. ”

“ For as he that dischargeth shot into a crowd, or so as not to look about regarding who may stand in the way, is no less guilty of doing mischief, and bound to make satisfaction to them he woundeth, than if he had aimed at some one person: so if we sling our bad words at random, which may light unluckily, and defame somebody, we become slanderers unawares, and before we think on it. This practice hath not ever all the malice of the worst slander, but it worketh often the effects thereof; and therefore doth incur its guilt, and its punishment ”

“ Thus the slanderers, while moved by the lowest and meanest feelings—those of hatred, revenge, malice, wounded vanity, or disappointed ambition,—seem quite unaware that they are paying the greatest tribute to her intellectual powers. ”

“ There are numbers of dull-witted creatures, drunkards, intriguing schemers and slanderers, but there is not one person of talent among them. I cannot tell you how bitter it is to me that the art I love has fallen into the hands of people I detest; how bitter it is that the best men look on at evil from afar, not caring to come closer, and, instead of intervening, write ponderous commonplaces and utterly useless sermons.... ”

“ Apdengti, see [ [A Dictionary of the Lithuanian and English Languages/#|] ] .
Apdergējas, f. -ja, s. slanderer; calumniator.
Apdergiantis, f. -ti, defin. -tysis, f. -čioji, prt. slanderous; calumnious.
Apdergimas, -o, sm. defamation; calumny; slander.
Apdergti (-giu, -giau, -gsiu) , v. a. (vulg.) to defame; to slander; to calumniate; to abuse.
Apdēstinēti (-nēju, -nējau, -nēsiu) , Apdēstyti (-dēstau, -dēsčiau, -dēstysiu) , v. frq., Apdēti (-dedu, -dējau, -dēsiu) , v. a. to lay over; to overlay: to set or put around. |style="padding-inline-start:10px; padding-inline-end:10px ”

“ Until now the dazzling purity of your life has sufficed to guard you. How could you have given rise to slander? But reflect now. I have come with you all the way from Khios, all the way from Toulon to Paris. I am aware that I am of not the slightest importance; you know me now well enough to believe that I do not exaggerate my importance for the sake of a miserable paltry vanity. But what is that to the world so long as it can malign? Does it not know, moreover, that slander is all the more odious when the object of the guilty love it supposes is least worthy of that love? ”

“ A learned counsellor in the midst of an affecting appeal in Court on a slander case delivered himself of the following flight of genius. "Slander, gentlemen, like a boa constrictor of gigantic size and immeasurable proportions, wraps the coil of its unwieldy body about its unfortunate victim, and, heedless of the shrieks of agony that come from the utmost depths of its victim's soul, loud and reverberating as the night thunder that rolls in the heavens, it finally breaks its unlucky neck upon the iron wheel of public opinion ”

“ Am I not the subject of slander! Am I not contaminated by associations? Has not society sought to clothe me with shame? Truth bends before falsehood, and virtue withers under the rust of slandering tongues. Again a storm rises up before her, and she feels the poisoned arrow piercing deep into her heart. Am I not living under the very roof that will confirm the slanders of mine enemies? she asks herself. And the answer rings back in confirmation upon her too sensitive ears, and fastens itself in her feelings like a reptile with deadly fangs. No; she is not yet free from her enemies. ”

“ The modest violet thus, concealed in thorny places sheds all unseen its delightful fragrance around.
Slander, which, under an appearance of justice, naturally inclines the heart to falsehood or to hatred, was entirely banished from their conversation; for it is impossible not to hate men if we believe them to be wicked, or to live with the wicked without concealing that hatred under a false pretence of good feeling. Slander thus puts us ill at ease with others and with ourselves. ”

“ Evil speaking, slander, detraction, gossip, scandal, are different names for one of the chief dangers to be guarded against in conversation; and you are doing much towards defending yourselves against it by the generous mental culture which you enjoy in this seminary. The demon of slander loves an empty house. A taste for scandal betrays a vacant mind. Furnish your minds, then, by useful reading and study, and by habits of reflection and mental industry, that you may be able to talk about subjects as well as about people,—about events too long past or too remote to be interwoven with slander. ”