William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

People talk worse about people than they talk good about people, because a lot of people like drama.

Any man familiar with public life realizes the foul gossip which ripples just under the surface about almost every public man, and especially about every President

There's always going to be people saying stuff.

The ball of rumor and criticism, once it starts rolling, is difficult to stop.

No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.

Everybody said Peyton Place would be a mistake.

Certainly there are people who like me, but then there are those who don't know me who gossip about me. You can't believe the things I've heard.

Some of the things people have said about me, well, they're unbelievable.

Don't believe anything they write about you, good or bad.

Someone's always saying something about me.

Normally, I never listen to the people who speak about me.

Everyone is ready to speak ill of a stranger.

Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors.

Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.

I know what they said even if they would not say it to my face. People love to talk. They love to slander you if you have any substance.

Whoever recounts to you the faults of your neighbour will doubtless expose your defects to others.

It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

I have never said a negative thing about anybody, even when the whole world was saying I was gay because Renée Zellweger cited fraud.

Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon--Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking.

There seems to be some pleasure for women in sick talk of one another.

When I've gotten criticism, it's that it's too long, too soft, didn't hit the government hard enough. Then when I do hit the government, they go, What's he doing hitting the government?

No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.