Quotes about gossip

If we can only speak to slander our betters, let us hold our tongues.

The difference between news and gossip-News tells you what people did, gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.

The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.

What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a lavatory seat.

Human nature is, by definition, a talkative one, imprudent, indiscreet, gossipy, incapable of closing its mouth and keeping it closed.

Hardly anything is more pleasant than talking about why other people are a pack of damn fools.

So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.

“Why do reporters have to dig into people’s privacy?” she fumed.

“Communication is much like sex.”

This set her back. “I don’t understand...”

A chuckle. “Being celibate is often wise and prudent. People know this, but the inborn drive to reproduce makes their organs wag. Keeping silent is often wise and prudent. People know this, also, but the drive to question and tell makes their tongues wag. Sex spreads genetic material, good and bad; prying spreads information, true and false; natural selection takes over and both ethical failings contribute to continuing evolution.”

Nothing like other folks' sin for distraction.

But they that are perfect, do not give ready heed to every news-bearer, for they know man’s weakness that it is prone to evil and unstable in words.

The atmosphere of desperate, ignorant terror essential to healthy rumors seeps away, replaced by a silent, wary paranoia. People bunker down, jealously keeping what they know, which is nothing, to themselves.

He heard them whispering—whispering... The independence seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering. ~ Ch. 32