Seneca the Younger Quotes

The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

Aren't rumors great. Anyone can start them. They're a wonderful way to put out feelers. It's like getting the benefits of a publicist without paying one.

You know the difference between news and gossip, don't you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.

The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly.

A rumor is one thing that gets thicker instead of thinner as it is spread.

If it were not for a goodly supply of rumors, half true and half false, what would the gossips do?

I grew up in a very small town where nearly everyone knew each other, and odds were that whatever you said about a person would make it back to them by nightfall - something incomers learned, to their frequent embarrassment.

There are rumors, rumors, rumors. I'm always the last one to know about these things, literally.

Everyone makes their own comments. That's how rumors get started.

The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it.

It's only gossip if you repeat it. Until then, it's gathering information.

Gossip, unlike river water, flows both ways.

Rumor and gossip, like sound itself, appear to travel by wave-effect, sheer preposterosity being no barrier.

The world of rumors and gossip is a world of wish fulfillment. And one of the things that gives volume and amplitude to a rumor is that it satisfies people's dreams and expectations about the world...

Rumor is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures.

Those who feed on rumors are small, suspicious souls.

The nature of rumor is well known to all. It was your own poet who said: 'Rumor, an evil surpassing all evils in speed.'

Gossip is only the lack of a worthy memory.

Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

Rumor ... often is fathered and mothered by false reports.

Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it.

gossip is just the small change of conversation.

You can hear rumors. But you can't know them.

Gossip is certainly one of the things that language is useful for, because it's always handy to know who needs a favor, who can offer a favor, who's available, who's under the protection of a jealous spouse. And being the first to get a piece of gossip is like engaging in insider trading: You can capitalize on an opportunity before anyone else can.