harmful rumors Quotes

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

Calumny is a monstrous vice: for, where parties indulge in it, there are always two that are actively engaged in doing wrong, and one who is subject to injury. The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; he who gives credit to the calumny before he has investigated the truth is equally implicated. The person traduced is doubly injured--first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who credits the calumny.

Slander is a shipwrack by a dry Tempest.

A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dead at the first blow, better not to strike at it.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

Neglected, calumny soon expires, show that you are hurt, and you give it the appearance of truth.

So fruitful is slander in variety of expedients to satiate as well as disguise itself. But if these smoother weapons cut so sore, what shall we say of open and unblushing scandal, subjected to no caution, tied down to no restraints?

Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.

If slander be a snake, it is a winged one - it flies as well as creeps.

Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren't THAT mean.

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.

To speak evil of any one, unless there is unequivocal proofs of their deserving it, is an injury for which there is no adequate reparation.

Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.