Josiah Gilbert Holland Quotes

Gossip bespeaks either a vacant mind or one that entertains jealousy or envy.

Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't.

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.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I will show you someone who is not interested in people.

To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.

Were there no hearers, there would be no backbiters.

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.

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.

Gossip is when you have a malice of intent or mindless, third-party conversation to someone about someone, something you haven't said to that someone.

… poison tongues …

Some people will always gossip.

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.

The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

Don't indulge in gossip. ... People who throw mudballs always manage to end up getting a little on themselves.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Gossip is the Devil's radio.

Gossip is hardly uplifting.

Gossip is conversation about people.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.

Gossip is the social mosquito.

Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.

Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously

Slander is a poison which kills charity, both in the slanderer and the one who listens.

Slander is poison to the soul.