The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.

Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.

Persons of quality had devoted yester evening and much of the night to liquidating their holdings in the South Sea Company and gathering in clubs and coffeehouses to misinform one another.

Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint:Things least to be believed are most preferred.All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint,Are readily believed if once put down in print

Rumour is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjecturesAnd of so easy and so plain a stopThat the blunt monster with uncounted heads,The still-discordant wavering multitude,Can play upon it.

The fledgling and ragtag American army turned its state into a semi-plausible advantage, encouraging enlistees to wear their own "hunting shirts" to build on the reputation of frontier marksmen.

Don't become a random photograph in the eyes of friends, and even your enemies, for each glance at your face will cause a declination of value and reputation. Create value, through scarcity.

Negative people will always be there to stain your pure image with their dirty tongues and brushes, but you'll always remain as white as snow, no matter how high the quality of paint they use.

A peaceful refuge in which to rediscover each other, we thought,, not realizing that, while golf and fishing are Scotland's most popular outdoor sports, gossip is the most popular indoor sport.

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

Sure, Mom.They stop and say hello, and then once you pass they talk the back off you like you were nothing. They assess your outfit, your hairstyle, and they garble what you say so it comes out ugly.

Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.

It’s not technically gossip if you start your sentence with “I’m really concerned about __________________ ,” (fill in the name of the person you’re not gossiping about).