49 Quotes Tagged: gossip

When people come together — let's say they come to a little party or something — you always hear them discuss character. They will say this one has a bad character, this one has a good character, this one Is a fool, this one is a miser. Gossip makes the conversation. They all analyze character. It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

The writers who don't discuss character but problems — social problems or any problems — take away from literature its very essence. They stop being entertaining. We, for some reason, always love to discuss and discover character. This is because each character is different, and human character is the greatest of puzzles.

This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people — because, surely, Wally was nice — would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer — and harder, if not impossible, to conceal.

Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.

There is, however, a far more common ailment among us — and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, and murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous.

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.

"Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighboring yeomen, the listener said, "Ah, Clym Yeobright: what is he doing now?' When the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will not be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity , good or bad. The devout home is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it...So the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him, if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative

One who gossips usually carries boredom in one hand and bitterness in the other.

A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena.

An introvert talks more than an extrovert because when the mouth is closed, the mind is opened.

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

When you call someone a sinner, make sure you have no sin in you, and if you say you are without sin, you are a righteous liar.

Everyone gathered around this drink in order to devote themselves to their favorite activity: discussion. This discussion had its own purpose: To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.