gossip

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.

A gossip is someone who's the knife of the party.

A gossip is someone who talks to you about others, a bore is someone who talks to you about himself, an excellent conversationalist is someone who talks to you about you.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.

Tis an old dial with many a stain; In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom, Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain, And white in winter like a marble tomb. And round about its gray, time-eaten brow Lean letters speak - a worn and shattered row: I am a Shade: A Shadowe too arte thou: I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

The best ammunition against lies is the truth, there is no ammunition against gossip. It is like a fog and the clear wind blows it away and the sun burns it off.

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

But there's another type of poison perhaps a little more insidious - thought poison - commonly called "gossip." Thought poison differs from body poison in two ways. It affects the mind, not the body, and it is more subtle. The person being poisoned usually doesn't know it. Thought-poison is subtle but it accomplishes "big" things. It reduces the size of our thinking by forcing us to concentrate on petty, unimportant things. It warps and twists our thinking about people because it is based on a distortion of facts, and it creates a guilt feeling in us that shows through when we meet the person we've gossiped about. Thought-poison is 0 percent right thinking: it is 100 percent wrong thinking. And contrary to lots of opinion, women have no exclusive franchise on gossip. Every day many men, too, live in a partially poisoned environment.

HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip.