May no portent1 of evil be attached to the words I say.
Anonymous2
To harken to evil conversation is the road to wickedness.. (Pravis Assuescere Sermonibus Est Via Ad Rem Ipsam)
Anonymous
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues3.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
Cato the Elder (234 BC - 149 BC)
There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly behooves4 any of us
To talk about the rest of us.
Edward Wallis Hoch (1849 - 1925), Marion (Kansas) Record
Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly5 in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Persuasion6, 1818
Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'
Johann K. Lavater
A rumor7 without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
John Tudor
Many species reciprocate8, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, 2005
Once you have listened to the gossip for some time, you will soon feel as if you know everyone, even if you have never met them.
Monica Fairview, Darcy Cousins, 2010
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III
Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?
Phocion (402 BC - 318 BC), from Plutarch, Apothegms
No sword bites so fiercly as an evil tongue.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586)
Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.
Spanish Proverb
Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935), 'Politics Getting Ready to Jell,' The Illiterate9 Digest, 1924
The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
