"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gossip of the day afford plenty of precedents for what happened to me and my brothers and sisters in Salzburg. Indeed, Prince Albert, Consort of the late Queen Victoria, was the only royal father of the first ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... drinkers and the women were the experienced elite of the society that sups. Their wits were bright, their eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different occupations of the lions themselves, and the scandals of the town, showed a tendency to break up into intimate tete-a-tete, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... sulky a humour to vouchsafe an answer; and Miss Dragwell quitted the house. Betsy had taken advantage of the turmoil and the supposed lunacy of her mistress to gossip in the neighbourhood. Nicholas Forster was in the shop, but took no notice of Miss Dragwell as she passed through. He appeared to have forgotten all that had occurred, and was very busy filing at his bench. There ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Walden. Within the building behind it are the literary collections of Samuel Pepys, who was secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., together with the manuscript of his famous diary, a book of marvellous gossip, recording the peccadilloes of its author, the jealousy of his wife, and the corruptions of the court. He was ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... drizzle that had set in. They had the compartment to themselves. When the boy slept she laid him out on the seat and wrapped him warmly. And when the health of relatives and friends had been inquired after, and the gossip of Island McGill narrated, along with the weather and the price of land and crops, there was little left to talk about save themselves, and Captain MacElrath took up the tale brought home for the good wife from all his world's-end wandering. But it was not a tale of marvels he told, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... carry on the reader more pleasantly, whether we read them in the quaint French of the fourteenth century, or in the more modern French in which they have just been clothed by M. Natalis de Wailly. So vividly does the easy gossip of the old soldier bring before our eyes the days of St. Louis and Henry III., that we forget that we are reading an old chronicle, and holding converse with the heroes of the thirteenth century. The fates both of Joinville's "Memoires" and of Joinville ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using them as the foundation of his romance. The fictitious name of Vaudrey has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Denzil was in extravagant spirits. In the morning he made a show of shutting himself up to meditate the theme of his discourse, but his sister presently saw him straying about the garden, and as soon as her household duties left her at leisure she was called upon to gossip and laugh with him. The Polterham Examiner furnished material for endless jesting. In the midst of a flow of grotesque fancies, he broke off ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... South American revolutions, but although we were friendly from this time until his death, he never alluded to such an occurrence. I realised, however, that he was very reticent as to his early life, and the gossip may ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... gossip had surmised, wore electric blue with collar and cuffs of lace that presumably was real, while angular Mrs. Sudds looked chaste, if somewhat like a windmill in repose, in her bridal gown. Mrs. Neifkins, too, came up to expectations in her ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... observed here that there are few who know so little as to the sexual morality of the people around them as clergymen. It does not become them, of course, to enter into the gossip of the village, nor does anyone care to broach such subjects in the first instance; and I may mention here that a relative of my own, a clergyman in a country parish, told me that if anything went wrong ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... himself, while a servant set a candle on a shelf behind him. Then he proceeded to catechise me in excellent English, with now and then a phrase of French, as to the doings in my own land. Admirably informed this Italian gentleman proved himself. I defy you to find in Almack's more intelligent gossip. He inquired as to the chances of my Lord North and the mind of my Lord Rockingham. He had my Lord Shelburne's foibles at his fingers' ends. The habits of the Prince, the aims of the their ladyships of Dorset and Buckingham, the extravagance of this noble ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... probably weep when the hour of parting comes. Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y——; and lastly the midshipman Z—— with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller than a boot: thirteen years old at the outside and already a regular woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip. In my childhood, I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theater, and I remember a certain Madame de Pompadour, a principal role, filled by a gayly dressed-up old monkey; ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of Burns's life has been told with such minuteness of detail, that the internal evidence of his poetry would seem only to be called in to verify or correct the verdict of tradition and the garbled gossip of those wise after the fact of his fame. It is so easy after a man has compelled the attention of the world to fill up the empty years of his life when he was all unknown to fame, with illustrative anecdotes and almost forgotten incidents, revealed and coloured by the light of after ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... telling his story in letters necessitates the acceptance of various improbabilities; reticence has sometimes to be violated, and confidences to be unduly made. Still, with all these allowances, the gossip of every one with regard to the likelihood of Sir Charles returning Harriet's very thinly veiled attachment is highly undignified, and often indecent. The Object himself, for whom no less than seven ladies were at that time openly sighing, alone ignores Harriet's love, or, at any rate, appears ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... finishings the lawyer's. They begin,—that in order to one Mr Friend's commands, one of them went to see the play. This was not the poet, I am certain; for nobody saw him there, and he is not of a size to be concealed. But the mountain, they say, was delivered of a mouse. I have been gossip to many such labours of a dull fat scribbler, where the mountain has been bigger, and the mouse less. The next sally is on the city-elections, and a charge is brought against my lord mayor, and the two sheriffs, for excluding true electors. I have heard, that a Whig ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... quantity of straw was collected on the top of the steep Stromberg Hill. Every inhabitant, or at least every householder, had to contribute his share of straw to the pile; a recusant was looked at askance, and if in the course of the year he happened to break a leg or lose a child, there was not a gossip in the village but knew the reason why. At nightfall the whole male population, men and boys, mustered on the top of the hill; the women and girls were not allowed to join them, but had to take up their ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... canaries, Java sparrows, and many kinds I had never seen before, confined in small cages. The confusion of sounds was dreadful, and I was sorry to hear that most of the conversation was the most malicious gossip. I was received with shouts of derision, and indeed my appearance was as wretched as possible. My feathers were soiled and broken, and I was overcome with sadness. The air of the place was stifling, and ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... than a moan made visible Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness in their inferiors Glimpse of her whole life in the horrid tomb of his embrace Good nature, and means no more harm than he can help Good and evil work together in this world Gossip always has some solid foundation, however small Graduated naturally enough the finer stages of self-deception Gratuitous insult Habit, what a sacred and admirable thing it is Hated one thing alone—which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at court will know that such differences between the highest individuals are quickly raked together and exaggerated. At every court there are men who seek to gain their master's favour by pouring oil on the flames, and who, by gossip and stories of all kinds, add to the antipathy that prevails. Thus it was in this case, and, instead of being drawn closer together, the two ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... distorted, but often with the most fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than a game of "Russian Scandal;" with this difference that while one is but a game, the other is but ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... gossip, the owl, — is it thou That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough, As I pass to the beach, art stirred? Dumb woods, have ye ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... roadside. In the yard were some thirty head of shaggy black cattle, of the northern kind seldom seen in our parts and therefore attractive to a farmer's eye. A farm-hand leaning over the gate had some noisy gossip with the dragoons as they passed, and bawled his news to a group of men sitting at meat under a hovel. It was a poor enough place to support so many men, for the farm-wife, who came to her kitchen door to see what the clatter was about, was of no better seeming than a yokel's wife with ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to tell you how I have passed my time, and what I have been able to accomplish, since I last wrote; thrice happy that I have to report of success rather than of defeat in that matter which I have undertaken. But first, let me thank you for all the city gossip, with which you so greatly entertained me in your joint epistle. Although I pass my hours and days in this beautiful capital as happily as I could any where out of Rome, still my letters from home are a great addition to my enjoyment. After rising from perusal of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... something on the counter. So great was the tension to which she had strung herself that she did not even envy the ordinariness of these people: they appeared to be in some other world, not attainable by herself. These were busied with domestic affairs, with beer or cheese or gossip. Her task was of another kind: so much she knew; and as to what that task was, she was ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Crow?" Kiddie Katydid inquired anxiously. He knew that the old gentleman was a great gossip. "You might as well put this in a newspaper as tell ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... hardly a dash of spray to show that she was moving, the sun beating down on her white decks and white canvas, on the three women in summer attire, on unending-bridge, with its accompaniment of tall glasses filled with ice, on Turner's morose face and Vail's watchful one. In the forecastle, much gossip and not a little fear, and in the forward house, where Captain Richardson and Singleton had their quarters, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laid the foundations of his Russian trip on a sound basis by requesting a friend of his in that country to post to the Baroness the bi-weekly budgets of Muscovite gossip which he intended to compose at Hechnahoul. This, it seemed to him, would be a simple feat, particularly with his friend Bunker to assist; but he had to confess that the provision of Chinese news would ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... an immense volume of noise and dust enveloped the main street of Sainte Lesse, stilling the quiet noon gossip of the town, silencing the birds, awing the town dogs so that their impending barking died to amazed gurgles drowned in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... said the great man. "Mrs. Macfadyen and I were on the gossip last night, and I know the whole story about ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... papers were full for months, amid the greater excitement of Princess Alexandra's wedding, of paragraphs headed "The Distress in the North," that had become as much a regular feature as the weather reports or the society gossip. The consequent uneasiness made itself felt even in Cornwall, and perhaps the Anti-Slavery meetings held in Penzance were not entirely disinterested. Also Botallack mine was then in full work and swallowing young men, though for poor enough wage. One way and another, managing ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... MATTHEW. Gossip, you'll like to hear, no doubt! A learned work has just come out— Messias is the name 'twill bear; The man has travelled through the air, And on the sun-beplastered roads Has lost shoe-leather by whole ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... just about to walk down to the police station to make some inquiries," responded Colwyn. "It is impossible to tell from that man's story how much is truth and how much mere gossip." ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... science—that is to say, the servant and teacher of the truth—by making other people do for him that which he might do for himself, passes half his time in dainty eating, in smoking, in talking, in free and easy gossip, in reading the newspapers and romances, and in visiting the theatres. It is not strange to us to see our philosopher in the tavern, in the theatre, and at the ball. It is not strange in our eyes to learn that those artists who sweeten and ennoble ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... scurrilous account of the late little incident at our house, implying, indeed openly asserting, that there had been a wholesale attempt at poisoning. Names were not given, not even the initials under which the reporters of such gossip often pretend to disguise publicity, and in a measure avoid responsibility; but, to the initiated, there could be no doubt that the paragraph referred to my unlucky cookery. Further particulars, it was said, would be given at a later date, although it was difficult ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... subject of all the gossip, was the center of a group of women. She had greeted and received them ceremoniously, but did not throw off her ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... son, especially as the pale, melancholy lad bore on his face no signs of dissipation. These disappearances lasted for over a year. Racah was chided by his mother, a large, chicken-minded woman, who liked gossip and chocolate. He never answered her, and on Sundays locked himself in his room. Once his sister listened at the door and told her father that she heard her brother counting aloud and clicking on the table with some soft, dull-edged tool, a ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... spite of their contentment, none of them was sorry when the opportunity offered for going to town. There was always a bit of stirring gossip to be picked up, and now and then there was a "show" at the "opera-house," in which, it is almost unnecessary to say, no opera had ever been sung. Then there was the hotel, at which one not only got good fare, but a ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... were half so handsome as a beech-tree," said the bear. "But I'm not going to gossip with you any more just now. I've had to trot over a mile in front of a confounded hunter, who caught me on one of my hind-legs with an arrow. Now I want to sleep; and perhaps you will be so kind as to provide me with rest, since you ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... found to possess a certain resemblance. So they serve mutually to fortify one another, and to constitute a quasi public opinion. The repetition and stereotyping of impressions are greatly forwarded by the system of organized gossip which we ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... doubt that. We will begin, if you like, next Monday. Perhaps, in order to avoid village gossip, it will be well to pass yourself off as my private secretary. Indeed, I will employ you a little in that ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... carpenter's shops are also places of common resort for the cultivators. Hither they wend in the morning and evening, often taking with them some implement which has to be mended, and stay to talk. The blacksmith in particular is said to be a great gossip, and will often waste much of his customer's time, plying him for news and retailing it, before he repairs and hands back the tool brought to him. The village is sure to contain two or three little temples of Maroti or Mahadeo. The stones ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... had myself a very slender acquaintance with this chapter of our literature; and what little I had was generally, at that period of my life, as, with most men, it continues to be to the end of life, a reflex knowledge, acquired through those pleasant miscellanies, half gossip, half criticism—such as Warton's Essay on Pope, Boswell's Johnson, Mathias' Pursuits of Literature, and many scores beside of the same indeterminate class; a class, however, which do a real service ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... relation to her. By openly protecting her, his honor became concerned in compelling respect to her person; and he went from group to group assuring his friends, in the tone of a man whom it was dangerous to contradict, that the lady was really Mademoiselle de Verneuil. The doubts and gossip ceased at once. As soon as Montauran felt that harmony was restored and anxiety allayed, he returned to his mistress eagerly, saying in a ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... wisdom of not wishing or asking of any human being more than that human being was made to give. They have the portion in due season for all: a bone for the dog; catnip for the cat; cuttle-fish and hemp-seed for the bird; a book or review for their bashful literary visitor; lively gossip for thoughtless Miss Seventeen; knitting for Grandmamma; fishing-rods, boats, and gunpowder for Young Restless, whose beard is just beginning to grow;—and they never fall into pets, because the canary-bird won't relish the dog's bone, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Phebe, and much gossip went on behind fans that evening, for those who had known her years ago found it hard to recognize the little housemaid in the handsome young woman who bore herself with such quiet dignity and charmed them all with her fine voice. "Cinderella ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the only thing left for Petty was to leave. So far from going to Yuma, he had progressed only to Monterey, and there spent two or three days poking about the resorts around the plaza in search of gossip that was rumored to be in circulation at Loring's expense. He found the gossipers easily enough, but had greater difficulty in reaching their authorities. It proved disheartening work, for the further he went the less he learned—each tale bearer having apparently added to the pile of his informant, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... usual. We talked war and hospital and local gossip for a while and then she seemed to take refuge at the piano. We had one red-letter day, when a sailor cousin of hers, fresh from the North Sea, came to luncheon and told us wonders of the Navy which we had barely imagined and did not ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... any more than you have already been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to provide for you ten times over, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... tales agains him galore: even said that Livia retained her hold on him by taking his indiscretions discreetly;—which is as much as to say that an utterly corrupt society judged that great man by its own corrupt standards. But Tiberius was too austere; his life chilled even Roman gossip into silence. There was also his patent devotion to Vipsania..... You could only sneer at him, if at ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... givin' experiences. One got up an' he wanted th' dear sisters to raise a little money to build a fence; a fence, y' understand? An' another got up an' wanted th' dear sisters t' have a sewin' bee, gossip buzz, A call 'em, to raise a little money for the Lord t' build a school. Losh! A stood it long as A could! Then A jumped up! 'Twas a hot night, an' A'd ripped off m' coat! A'm no sure my collar hadn't slumped t' a jelly, too! Says I, 'If y'r reverences will excuse a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... did not give him a military command, but always employed him in a civil capacity. He did not like to speak of the accident that occasioned his deformity, and would, if asked, always give an evasive answer. Pietro, the Italian, was a great gossip, and his stories could not always be relied upon. His account of the broken leg was that when Samuel went to Shoa, some Englishman there gave him a kick which sent him rolling down some small ravine, and in the fall the leg was broken. It was on account of that blow from an ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... present, Sir Geoffrey listened with surprise and eagerness, endeavouring to catch something which should render their conversation intelligible; but as he totally failed in gaining any such key to their meaning, he broke in with,—"'Sblood and thunder, Julian, what unprofitable gossip is this? What hast thou to do with this fellow, more than to bastinado him, if you should think it worth while to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... king, and of their mutual fondness for literature. To William Thynne, indeed, all who read the English language are deeply indebted, for to his industry and love for his author we owe much of what we now possess of Chaucer. Another curious bit of literary gossip to be gleaned from this tract is that William Thynne was a patron and supporter of John Skelton, who was an inmate of his house at Erith, whilst composing that most masterly bit of bitter truth, his "Colin Clout," asatire perhaps unsurpassed ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... looked at her friend, frightened. The latter, without noticing her expression, continued her terrible gossip: ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... but I keep a conscience concealed about me; and I am in doubt about several things. For instance, we both want to turn Verner out of Parliament, but what weapon are we to use? I've heard a lot of gossip against him, but is it right to act on mere gossip? Just as I want to be fair to you, so I want to be fair to him. If some of the things I've heard are true he ought to be turned out of Parliament and every other club in London. But I don't want to turn him out of Parliament ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... own cousin-jarmin, Anne Wild, Stood for Biddy Mulroony's first child; And Biddy's step-son, sure he married Bess Dunn, Who was gossip to Jenny, as mild a child As ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... tell him so, and also implies that she has something else to do than to stand there all day talking bed-gossip with him. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... macadamized roads to Shechem and Nazareth and Tiberias,—with hotels at all the "principal points of interest,"—and with every facility for doing Palestine in ten days, without getting away from the market-reports, the gossip of the table d'hote, and all that queer little complex of distracting habits which we ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... that there was nothing of the gossip in Randall Byrne, but now he was pardonably excited and perceiving the tall form of Hank Dwight in the doorway he approached ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... consciousness I found myself lying on a sofa in a small sitting-room; but no one was bending tenderly over me—not even a mother's face met my eyes—but the gossip of two women servants grated ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... second and last act save that sprung of this stranger's entrance and quarrelsomeness, and his interruptions of an old, old man's story of what he knows of Peg's life. The stranger listens while Parry Cam tells of the cause of her madness, but when he repeats what for years has been the gossip of the countryside about her supposed killing of her babe, the "traveling man" interrupts and declares he is the son whom it was rumored she had drowned. In the end he is turned out of the house, not altogether ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... together with a small number who owed allegiance to Eric Sawyer, found the story quite to their liking and doubtless told and retold it and enlarged upon it at every telling. At all events, Steve knew that gossip was busy with him. More than once conversation died suddenly away at his approach, and he told himself bitterly that the school had judged him and found him guilty. He passed Andy Miller in the corridor between recitations, and Andy, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... meals. They had a new boy who played the guitar. He used maple-syrup an his meat, and claimed he was from Alabama. Brock guessed things were about as usual in most ways. The new well had caved in again. Then, in the midst of his gossip, the thing he had wanted to say all along came out: "We're pleased about your promotion," said he; and, blushing, shook ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... a weekly paper in the town which had known and honored his father, and was proud of, if puzzled by, their well-informed debonair son. Even himself he sometimes puzzled. He knew that this was not to be his life's work, this chronicling of the very smallest beer, this gossip and friendliness and good cheer. But it served to fill his leisure and his modest exchequer until such time as he could finish his great tragedy and take his destined place among the writers of his time. Meanwhile, he told himself, with somewhat rueful humor, ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... families are divided. Parents grow apart, and unconsciously the pearl of greatest price is thrown away. The wife ceases to be the intellectual companion of the husband. She reads the "Christian Register," sermons in the Monday papers, and a little gossip about folks and fashions, while he studies the works of Darwin, Haeckel and Humboldt. Their sympathies become estranged. They are no longer mental friends. The husband smiles at the follies of the wife and she weeps for the ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any means the worst element in the Rosenthall melange. So said common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently established by the interference of the police on at least one occasion, followed by certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with justifiable gusto and huge ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... more terrific warnings and exhortations in the sacred writings than are found in the Proverbs of Solomon. The sins of idleness, of anger, of covetousness, of gossip, of falsehood, of oppression, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity, are uniformly denounced as leading to destruction; while prudence, temperance, chastity, obedience to parents, and loyalty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... print left by the queen's foot as she walks, and priding himself on its beauty. It is so natural to wish to find what is fair and precious in high places,—so astonishing to find the Bourbon a glutton, or the Guelph a dullard or gossip. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which Panshine's voice and laugh were making themselves heard. He was communicating some piece of town gossip to Maria Dmitrievna and Gedeonovsky, both of whom had by this time returned from the garden, and he was laughly loudly at his own story. At the name of Lavretsky, Maria Dmitrievna became nervous and turned pale, but went forward to ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... places on the same day. A travelling king such as this was well known to all his people. He was no constitutional fiction, but a living man; his character, his look and presence, his oaths and jests, his wrath, all were noted and talked over; the chroniclers who followed his court with their gossip and their graver news spread the knowledge of his doings. A new sense of law and justice grew up under a sovereign who himself journeyed through the length and breadth of the land, subduing the unruly, ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... the area steps with their pitchers to meet her, and detain her with much gossip. The one in the picture, whose arms are comfortably folded under her white apron, may be telling her that the mistress's baby is sick, and that the doctor despairs of its life. She may even be saying to her: "The only thing ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... smug, smartaleck gossip column: Saucers are passe at the Pentagon. There's another mystery that's got the ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... perceived such hopes of Bellarmine's recovery, and that the gossip Fame had, according to custom, so enlarged his danger, she presently abandoned all further thoughts of Horatio, and was soon reconciled to her aunt, who received her again into favour, with a more Christian forgiveness than we generally meet with. Indeed, it is possible ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... contained portraits, about thirty in number, of her intimate friends, whom the world, first and last, had given her as lovers. The number was a calumny; but had rumor said ten, it might have been, as her friend Madame d'Espard remarked, good, sound gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de Marsay, Rastignac, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome Lucien de Rubempre, had all ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... keeping a private mad-house. It was not quite so private as it might have been, for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abundant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever she talked about she made interesting, and her relations with her husband became a common subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage had never been a real one, that they were only companions, and so forth. Froude was content to enjoy the society of the most gifted couple in London without troubling himself to solve mysteries which did ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... desires you, dear ladies, to accompany me back to lunch—a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing. You know them all more or less, having been associated with every one of them in some form of beneficence. I might more accurately describe it: having donated largely to each of their pet charities. It is ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... his mind as to the most advantageous course for him to pursue. With the full concurrence of the Sultan, he left Constantinople and journeyed to Aleppo to see Ibrahim. The latter was both cunning and tenacious. Removed from the capital, the tide of gossip and discontent only reached him at second-hand; but he was not to be deterred by popular clamour even had he been in the midst of it. None knew better than he who and what was Barbarossa; in fact, it may ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... puzzled me," replied my father, "when I stood in this house on the morning of your pretended robbery. I knew what had happened. But I thought it wiser to let the evil thing remain a mystery, rather than unearth it to foul your family name and connect this child in gossip for all her ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... general simmering down of coastwise gossip in the static-room when the frosted glass door of the Chief's office closed behind him. Voices trailed off into curious ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... "Yes, quite as much. And he loves her, too, loves her with his whole soul. Perhaps you never knew that they would have been married long ago in Simla if Muriel hadn't overheard some malicious gossip and thrown him over. How in the world she made him let her go I never knew, but she did it, though I believe it nearly broke his heart. He came to me afterwards and begged me to keep her with me as long as I could, and take care ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... only person that could answer their curiosity or give any account of me; and she, a tattling woman and a true gossip, took care to do that with all the art that she was mistress of. She let them know that I was the widow of a person of quality in France, that I was very rich, that I came over hither to look after an estate that fell to me by some of my relations who died here, that I was worth L40,000 ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... somewhat sinister aspect, her dull eyes very deep in their wrinkles, her nose pushed aside out of the perpendicular, her long lips stretched tightly over protruding teeth. She was as curious as an old monkey; but it was not only her curiosity that made her the busiest gossip and the most charitable "good soul" in the street; she had her share of human kindness, and if she was as crafty as a hypocrite, it was because she enjoyed handling men ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... devil, Vagen," said Charles, starting up again that slow stream of fainting words and sentences. "Anywhere to get you out of the room so you won't fill the flapping ears of your friends with gossip about Whitney and his wife. Though why she should send you out I can't understand. If you and the servants don't hear what's going on, you make up and tattle worse than what ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... presently, my friend does understand that he has wronged me; that the gossip he repeated or the construction he put upon my actions was not fair or true. And immediately that I become aware of this, from him or from another, my resentment goes, if I have any natural virtue at all; it goes because my wounded pride is healed. I ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... Scots Guards, inseparable friends, came to gossip with us, and read the papers, and drink a little whisky in the evenings, and pick the raspberries. They were not professional soldiers. One of them had been a stock-broker, the other "something in the city." They disliked the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... by misfortune, poor devil; I wish he would go back to London. As I was saying—I mean as I was about to say—I left you and Lady Harry together this morning; two old friends, glad (as I supposed) to have a gossip about old times. When I come back, I find you left here alone, and I am told that Lady Harry is in her room. What do I see when I get there? I see the finest pair of eyes in the world; and the tale they tell me is, We have been crying. When I ask what may have happened to account ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... would send her word of the piece of preferment which has occurred to me since, viz. being sent for by the Queen Dowager, who desired my friend Mademoiselle d'Este to bring me to call upon her. But what wonderful gossip it does seem to be writing gravely round and round from Leamington to London, and from London ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... he took up the cask and put it back on the table, and thanked the man for the good meal, and told his mother to come and thank him too, and a-feared though she was, she dared do nothing else but thank the man. Then the lad sat down again alongside the man and began to gossip, and after they had sat a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... had enough of this gossip," he said, in a disdainful tone; "I will only say one thing more, master clown, and that is, that ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... a foot in height, properly finished with a moulding around the edge, was substituted for the worn and blackened pickets; and it was touching to witness the mournful satisfaction with which two or three old crones would come regularly every evening at sunset, to sit and gossip over the ashes ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... of New York gossip published in the New York Star, called "Bab's Babble." Edward had read it, and saw the possibility of syndicating this item as a woman's letter from New York. He instinctively realized that women all over the country would read it. He sought out the author, made arrangements ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... pianos, and finding chords to the music of their heart-strings. If I have pictured Number Five as one of her lambs might do it, I have succeeded in what I wanted to accomplish. Why don't I describe her person? If I do, some gossip or other will be sure to say, "Oh, he means her, of course," and find a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be a brother of the stern Bienville, this the man upon whom my governor's fortunes now so largely depended? His foppish manner impressed me very disagreeably, and, in no pleasant frame of mind, I stalked along by his side listening to the senseless gossip of the court. We soon passed out of the gardens into the great hall, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... that he had threatened to kill his master. His sullen and moody demeanor at the marriage of his mother told terribly against him, and the rumors of the previous quarrel when Ned had assaulted his stepfather, and which, related with many exaggerations, had at the time furnished a subject of gossip in the town, also told ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... people have been interested in and entertained by gossip respecting the personal habits and individual idiosyncrasies of popular writers and orators. It is a universal and undying characteristic of human nature. No age has been exempt from it from PLINY'S time down to BEECHER'S. It may suitably be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... belles-lettres, certainly, but not permanently, I think, in the case of the artistic novel. As yet the women, who form the largest, if not the only cultivated class among us, have not taken very cordially to the Sunday edition, except for its social gossip; they certainly do not go to it for their fiction, and its fiction is mainly of the inferior sort with which boys and men beguile ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... find a perfect drawing-room, carpeted, canopied, and dark as twilight; its verdant seats broidered with violets and forget-me-nots; and all untenanted it seems, nay, deserted rather, for the music wastes on the lonely air, as if the fairy that kept state there, in gossip mood had stolen down some neighboring aisle, and would be home anon. I would have bartered all the glory of this campaign for leave to stretch myself on its mossy bank, for a soft ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... (not a red wing among them) sat gossiping in a treetop. Elsewhere, even later than this (it was now April 7), I saw flocks, every bird of which wore shoulder-straps,—like the traditional militia company, all officers. They did not gossip, of course (it is the male that sports the red), but ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... renown, and one of the Anglican clergy will almost invariably be an antiquary of real merit. The mayor and corporation belong, as a rule, to the larger set, but the lawyers and doctors hold a neutral position and are welcomed everywhere, partly for the sake of gossip, partly for their own individual merits. Warwick has the additional advantage over many kindred places of the near neighborhood of Leamington, a fashionable watering-place two miles and a half distant, one of the mushrooms of this century, but in a practical point of view one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... finally to do, he did not ask it; he used his footing in their house chiefly as a basis for flirtations beyond it. He began to share his devotions to Ellen with her girl friends, and not with her girl friends alone. It did not come to scandal, but it certainly came to gossip about him and a silly young wife; and Kenton heard of it with a torment of doubt whether Ellen knew of it, and what she would do; he would wait for her to do herself whatever was to be done. He was never ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... previous knowledge of the household, and by giving the impression of a mourner, to gain access. The murderers had not yet been caught. Because the public knew nothing of "Lefty" Louie, or "Gyp the Blood," or even of the late Lieutenant Becker, it was common gossip that the criminals lurked in the neighborhood, and that, in order to avoid suspicion, they would appear among the chief mourners. Therefore, each eye was turned against its neighbor, and each man, as he passed you, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... man against evil, by establishing habits of chastity, temperance, and self-control. He goes forward into the Christian graces of patience, humility, and forgiveness of injuries. He has a horror of falsehood, a reverence for truth; he forbids slander and gossip; he teaches respect for parents, family, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... have been astounded by the chorus of execration with which the news of the compact was received at Rome.[944] Nor indeed can any single reason, adequate in itself and without reference to others, be assigned for this feeling of hostility. First, there was the idle gossip of the public places and the clubs—gossip which, in the unhealthy atmosphere of the time, loved to unveil the interested motives which were supposed to underlie the public actions of all men of mark, and which exhibited moderation to an enemy as ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... river-banks, threshing-floors, these were the old places of resort for country boys. And nothing was so sweet to me, when I was a boy, as the newly cut clover-hay where I sat with two or three companions, watching the barn swallows chattering their incomprehensible gabble and gossip from the doors of their mud houses in the rafters. And what stories we told and what talks we had. In the city who does not remember the old-fashioned cellar-door, sloping down to the ground? These were always ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... put her to bed for she could not bear to have Licinia near her. The old woman's gossip jarred upon her nerves and she was physically afraid to hear indifferent lips utter the name ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... governed his biographic record by the instincts of a gentleman, we should have possessed far less wealth of gossip by which to judge of the manhood and the familiar surroundings of the great lexicographer. And we can readily imagine that a conscientious man, in setting about the task of writing the life of a favorite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... urging. Here was a chance for a few more moments of gossip. If Miss Flossie wished to take care of the baby, why not permit her to? Her Uncle Harry had given his permission, and as it was his ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... singing face to point the way, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood. The stars are for me; the horizon wakes Its pilgrim chanting; and the little sand Grows musical of hope beneath my feet. The waves that leap to meet my swimming breast Gossip sweet secrets of the light-drenched way, And when the deep throbs of the rising surge Pulse upward with me, and a rain of wings Blurs round the moon's pale place, she stoops to reach Still welcome of bright hands across the wave, ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... diverted me at the time, but I fully believe it has served me in good stead since. For it set me on my guard as perhaps nothing else would have done, against accepting for true all floating rumour and village gossip, so that now I am by second nature a true sceptic and scarcely believe anything unless the evidence for it is conclusive. Indeed I could never have got to the bottom of this history if I had believed one tenth part of what I was told, there was so much of it ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... typical of many others in homes of equal culture, for Bertha's position as well as her face and manner piqued curiosity. After all, the town was a small place—just large enough to give gossip room to play in—and the sheen of Mrs. Haney's wealth made her conspicuous from afar, while her youth and boyish beauty had been the subject of admiring club talk from the very first. Haney was only an old and wounded animal, whose mate was ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in a highly cultivated age, in daily converse with scholars, poets, philosophers, and men of very considerable scientific attainments. In reading Clarendon and Burnet, and whilst turning over Aubrey's delightful gossip, it is impossible not to be struck with the width and variety of the learning as well as with the wit of the period. Intellectually ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... young yet, my friend," replied my host, "but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one-half that you see. Now about our Maisons de Sante, it is clear that some ignoramus has misled you. After dinner, however, when you have sufficiently recovered from the fatigue of your ride, I will be happy to take you over the house, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Prince Boris wrote a long letter to his "chere maman," in piquantly misspelt French, giving her the gossip of the court, and such family news as she usually craved. The purport of the letter, however, was only disclosed in the final paragraph, and then in so negative a way that it is doubtful whether the Princess ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... mind, sir," Arnold said, "that if it comes to light afterwards, as it very probably may, that the man was first discovered in Mrs. Weatherley's boudoir, the scandal and gossip will be a great deal worse than if you came forward and told the whole ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the Man in the Park. Miss Dickenson added a rider to the effect that she could quite understand the position. It would be a matter of mutual tacit consent, tempered down by formal calls enough to allay local gossip. "I think Miss Torrens has stopped," said she collaterally; you know how one speaks collaterally? "Shall we ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan |
