A dog that will fetch a bone, will carry a bone.
R. Forby (1830) on gossip
Anyone who will gossip to you, will gossip about you.
unknown
Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.
unknown
Four horses cannot overtake the tongue.
Chinese (on gossip)
If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.
Aesop (c.620-560 BC)
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Harry Truman (1884-1972)
It is easier to dam a river than to stop gossip.
Moro (Filipino) (on gossip)
Little said is soonest mended.
George Wither (1588-1667)
Never apologize before you are accused.
Charles I of Great Britain (1600-1649)
Not everything you hear is good for talk.
Japanese (on gossip)
Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error.
George Eliot (1819-1880)
The house of the loud talker, leaks.
African proverb Zulu Tribe
Where there is smoke there is fire.
unknown
Words have no wings but they can fly a thousand miles.
Korean (on gossip)
Words once spoken can never be recalled.
Wentworth Dillon (c.1633-1685)
Words spoken are like eggs broken.
Sheri Glewen
You can’t sew buttons on your neighbor’s mouth.
Russian (on gossip)
What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth.
Jewish Proverb
What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away.
Chinese Proverb
Gossip is saying behind their back what you would not say to their face. Flattery is saying to their face what you would not say behind their back.
Unknown
If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Khalil Gibran
If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends, you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.
Alice Duer Miller
A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
Ouida
It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things.
Lawrence G. Lovasik
Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don’t.
Earl Wilson
Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
Joseph Conrad
Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.
Frank A. Clark
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
Henry Thomas Buckle
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie Curie
Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.
Anna Godbersen
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
Honor de Balzac, Pere Goriot
Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.
Shannon L. Alder
Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they’re jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.
Shannon L. Alder
Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind.
Unknown
He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue
Mark Twain
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
Cato the Elder
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.
George Eliot
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.
Marcus Aurelius,Meditations
Doesn’t matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you anyway.
Felder Rushing
If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner… if I let it slip from my tongue, I am its prisoner.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.
Richard Steele
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.
Francis Bacon
Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.
Douglas Adams
It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.
Errol Flynn
Some secrets are fires so scorching, the only way to quench the burn is to tell someone.
Terri Guillemets
Who brings a tale takes two away.
Irish Proverb
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
Jane Austen
It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard.
Jude Morgan
The worst thing about talk … is that there’s no way to lay it to rest. Every fresh breeze brings a new speculation.
Susan Wittig Albert
A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.
Vera Nazarian
