"Tattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be surprised at the nonsense I have written, since I tell you the scene of the riot and uproar from whence it bears date. At this very moment the confused murmur of voices and music stops all regular proceedings: old women and children tattling; apes, bears, and show-boxes under the windows; French rattling, English swearing, outrageous Italians, frisking minstrels; tambours de basque at every corner; myself distracted; a confounded squabble of cooks ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... promised faithfully never to tell; but Jack was awfully queer, lately, and the least little thing offended him. He would refuse to see that it was the best to take Kate into the secret, because it gave Marion more freedom to do things for his comfort. He would consider that she had been tattling secrets just because she could not hold her tongue, and she resented in advance his attitude. Guiltily conscious of having betrayed him, she still believed that she had done him a real service ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... that strange instinct which makes criminals of every degree feel that no crime is so low but that tattling on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... do him any real harm," growled Shalleg, "but I'm going to put him out of the game, just as I was kept out of it by his tattling tongue. I'm going to make him fail to show up to-morrow, and the next day, too, maybe. That'll put a crimp in his record, and in the Cardinals', too, for he's been doing good work for them. I'll say that about him, much as I ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... drink Bottl'd Ale. At all Assemblies, Rakes are up and down, And Gamesters, where they think they are not known. Shou'd I denounce our Author's fate to Day, To cry down Prophecies, you'd damn the Play: Yet Whims like these have sometimes made you Laugh; 'Tis Tattling all, like Isaac Bickerstaff. Since War, and Places claim the Bards that write, Be kind, and bear a Woman's Treat to-Night; Let your Indulgence all her Fears allay, And none ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... have been used, too, to babbling and tattling,' said his patron with perfect coolness. 'Beware of that here, or you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... people, if I had, I'd be in it teaching my dirty rude brats not to be thieves. I wouldn't for everlasting be at other people's places scandalising people twice as good as myself. I didn't think Mrs Clay was the sort of person to go tittle-tattling—she can please herself; but it doesn't concern you if I do put on airs. I want to know what you mean by that I should be kept in my place. I'll swear I know how to carry my day as well as you do, and to keep in my place too well to be going round meddling ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... over her glasses. "Never repeat what you hear me say, love. It's tattling, and tattling is ill-bred. Now, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... thicket with the oddest little clatter Sings his rattling little, prattling little, tattling little tune; Fleet the feet of tiny stars go patter, patter, patter, As they scamper from the heavens at the rising of the moon. Beaming little, gleaming little fireflies go dreaming To the dearest little, queerest little baby ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... himself had small hopes of Cuthbert's success, he was interested in spite of himself in the proposed plan, and would have been more so had he known how much had been already discovered. But Cuthbert kept much of that to himself, not willing that tattling tongues should spread the rumour. Only to real believers in the hidden treasure did he care to speak of the gipsy's strange words and the visit to the wise woman of Budge Row. Philip, he thought, would smile, and perhaps he would speak of the matter to his father, who in turn ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but 153:27 mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood, we shall be more careful of our mental con- 153:30 ditions and we shall avoid loquacious tattling about disease, as we would avoid advocating crime. Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish 154:1 error in any form, and certainly we should not be error's advocate. 154:3 Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from as- sociation. Since it is a law of mortal mind ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... than they ought.) Shall I have it out and be done with it? To see Mary at once (to carry bastion after bastion at the charge)—there were the true safety after all! Hurry—hurry's the road to silence now. Let them once get tattling in their parlours, and it's death to me. For I'm in a cruel corner now. I'm down, and I shall get my kicking soon and soon enough. I began it in the lust of life, in a hey-day of mystery and adventure. I felt it great to be a bolder, craftier ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me from behind his chair, say to me,—'Simpson, I hear that you make too free with my wine, and are frequently intoxicated; stop it, or I shall dismiss you.' In short, Lagrange was the bane of my existence, and I secretly swore to be terribly revenged upon him for his tattling propensities. You'll soon see how ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... my being jilted, you tattling old maid; you have told that I was a good-for-nothing scapegrace, and I'll pay you for it," said Philip, shaking his fist at the house; and walked on again, meditating how to do it, his boots at each ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... there is anything I hate on earth, It is a ranting, tattling, prattling jade, Who gossips all day long, and fattens on Her neighbors' foibles, and at night lies down To dream some ghostly tale, and rises soon To bawl it through the town ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... provoke you to suppose me vulgar and odious enough to try to put you out of conceit of a most interesting and unfortunate creature; and I don't quite as yet see—though I dare say I shall soon make out!—what our friend has in her head in tattling to you on these matters as soon as my back's turned. Petherton will tell you—I wonder he hasn't told you before—why Mrs. Grendon, though not perhaps herself quite the rose, is decidedly in these days too ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... heart and influences his whole life for good or for evil. A parent should carefully avoid speaking evil of others, and should never exhibit faults requiring the mantle of charity to cover. A parent's example should be such as to excite an abhorrence of evil speaking, of tattling and of uncharitable construction of the motives of others. Let the mother begin the proper training of her children in early life and she will be able to so mold their characters that not only will they acquire the habit of bridling the tongue, but they will learn to avoid ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... soon found the lovers needed my assistance more than I could have supposed; for they were absolute novices in any sort of intrigue, which to me seemed as easy and natural as lying. Francis had been detected by some tattling spy in his walks with Clara, and the news had been carried to old Mowbray, who was greatly incensed at his daughter, though little knowing that her crime was greater than admitting an unknown English student to form a personal acquaintance with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... easy 'tis To cheat this busy, tattling, censuring world! For fame still names our actions, good or bad, As introduc'd by chance, which ofttimes throws Wrong lights on objects; vice she dresses up— In the bright form, and goodliness, of virtue, While virtue languishes, and pines neglected, ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... noon declares, Warning the cookmaid not to burn That roast meat, which it cannot turn. The groaning-chair began to crawl, Like a huge insect, up the wall; There stuck, and to a pulpit grew, But kept its matter and its hue, And mindful of its ancient state, Still groans while tattling gossips prate. The mortar only chang'd its name, In its old shape a font became. The porringers, that in a row, Hung high, and made a glitt'ring show, To a less noble substance chang'd, Were now but leathern buckets rang'd. The ballads, pasted on the wall, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... condition, to backbite [Condition, quality.] Anies good name for envie or despite. 720 He stands on tearmes of honourable minde, Ne will be carried with the common winde Of courts inconstant mutabilitie, Ne after everie tattling fable flie; But heares and sees the follies of the rest, 725 And thereof gathers for himselfe the best. He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face, But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace, And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie; But not with kissed hand belowe the knee, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... that tattling landlady, in the way in which such people are most readily hushed; and for Topham, and his brace of night owls, they must hawk at other and lesser game than ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Anne dearie, and when you come to think of all the trouble in the church those two tattling, deceitful youngsters of the last minister's made, I'm inclined to overlook a good ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
