Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes

He that easily believes rumors has the principle within him to augment rumors. It is strange to see the ravenous appetite with which some devourers of character and happiness fix upon the sides of the innocent and unfortunate.

There is nothing which wings its flight so swiftly as calumny, nothing is uttered with more ease; nothing is listened to with more readiness, nothing disbursed more widely.

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

A man calumniated is doubly injured - first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.

Slander is worse than cannibalism.

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

A tongue prone to slander is the proof of a depraved mind.

Many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation.

Gossip is the Devil's radio.

It is harder to kill a whisper than even a shouted calumny.

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.

People have already dirtied my name too much.

Slander strongly and some will stick.

… poison tongues …

Nothing is so swift as calumny; nothing is more easily uttered; nothing more readily received; nothing more widely dispersed.

Infamous Greek calumnies

Some people will always gossip.

You work hard, you sacrifice for everything you do, and in one second, someone can tarnish your name - someone can bad-mouth you, and someone can say things. People let all of the good things gets washed away because someone spoke ill of them.

A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them.

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.

To be lied about, to be slandered, to be smeared so publicly, and before your family that you love, is very painful.

To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin

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