"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elect to lead the life of a single woman. It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they had married. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Some days later, when gossip on the subject was subsiding, a fresh scandal revived it. A literary friend of Mr. Jansenius's helped him to compose an epitaph, and added to it a couple of pretty and touching stanzas, setting forth that ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... business-like affairs of life. It was a charm in strong contrast to the ordinary manners of those who are emphatically called "Ladies' men." No artificial smile, no conventional, hollow blandness, no frivolous gossip, no varnish either of ungenial gayety or affected grace. The charm was in a simplicity that unbent more into kindness than it did with men. Audley's nature, whatever its faults and defects, was essentially masculine; and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... p. 721. From the affinity of the Cucurbitaceae to the Passifloraceae, it might be argued that the tendrils of the former are modified flower-peduncles, as is certainly the case with those of Passion flowers. Mr. R. Holland (Hardwicke's 'Science-Gossip,' 1865, p. 105) states that "a cucumber grew, a few years ago in my own garden, where one of the short prickles upon the fruit had grown out into a long, ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... tapa cloth with which they repaired the worn-out clothes of their husbands, or fabricated petticoats for themselves and such of the children as had grown old enough to require such garments. But besides these occupations, they spent a portion of their time in prattling gossip, which, whatever the subject might be, was always accompanied with a great deal of merriment and hearty laughter. They also spent no small portion of their time in the sea, for bathing was one of the favourite amusements of ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... engaging a discussion. What he had come to seek in the editorial office was not controversy, but information. Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject. Solitary life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of gossip, which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday exercise regard as the commonest use ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... gossip of servants should enlighten the children sooner or later. The irony of it all is that this gossip filtered in here through your son, Duane. That is how the case stands, Colonel Mallett; and I have used my judgment and permitted the children this large liberty which they ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... was given that the party who had travelled all night wished to repose for a few hours; all others therefore withdrew, to secure quiet some within the pine-wood, others to the nearest breezy hill, to gossip and sport, while some few took the opportunity of going home, to see after their cattle, or other domestic affairs, intending to return in ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... all. He was said to have been concerned in some of the many 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
... taking long, aimless walks, bringing home neither news nor gossip, and then sitting silent, absorbed in her own thoughts, or else feverishly expectant; while each evening she sank into deeper ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... is no living man, who, on such an occasion, could intend and contrive to say so much and so well (in form) without ever rising above the level of antiquarian gossip. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... which these anecdotes occasioned, the Judge came in: delighted with the merriment, and delighted with his wife, he seated himself beside her, quite covetous of an hour's gossip with the ladies. Mrs. Gunilla served him up the human soul in the Orbis Pictus, and Elise instigated her still further to the relation of the purification of the boys. The Judge laughed at both from the bottom of his heart, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... sometimes wondered how it were possible for a woman to live in this country without having close at hand one of her sex with whom to gossip," he remarked, looking at Ed and deliberately closing an eye at him. "It doesn't bother a man so much—this being alone. If he is a drinking man there are the saloons; if a poet he may write wise saws concerning the inconstancy of women; he may punch cows, another man's head—or run ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was the Gossip's Journal, provoking endless parliamentary wrangles, and perhaps helping to develop later on an editor. Memorable were the Young People's Conventions of 1886 and 1887, and Lylians will never forget the patriot Kromm, Spoopendyke Shreve, the poet laureate and ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... that she was, and, forgetting for a moment his great love, referred to her partiality for gossip in the most scathing terms he could muster. The mate, averse to such a tame ending to a promising adventure, ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... going, too?" Snowball hesitated. He did not like to gossip about family matters, but it was a friend of the family who ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... next night, a visit would be made to some one else's home and so on, until everyone had a sufficient amount of bed-clothing made for the winter. Besides, this was an excellent chance to get together for a pleasant time and discuss the latest gossip. Most friendly calls were made on Sunday, after securing a "pass". This "pass" was very necessary to go from ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... or weary. At the charge of a lion she had withheld her fire till the last possible moment. By night, the safari encamped, she had sat before her tent in a folding chair, one knee cocked over the other, a pipe between her teeth, listening to the gossip of ragged wanderers who had been attracted by the firelight and the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... every day, and with a joyful look went down to the harbor to gossip with the other wives. She said that this delay was but natural: was it not the same event every year? These were such safe boats, and ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... my custom of setting two chairs at the table to which they may return at any minute? Miss Hunter, what I do in the loneliness of that great house is not worth the gossip of those ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... at least, the grande dame or the aristocrat the equal of the modest employee, and, while the jupiere is turning round and round madame la baronne, there often takes place a lively interchange of gossip and a review of the plastic qualities of the friends and rivals in beauty of madame la baronne who are also customers of the house. The grand couturier himself is a treasure-house of queer stories and scandals, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... that you would do well to reconsider your decision to leave tomorrow. Your sudden departure would give rise to ill-natured talk. It would be wiser to stay here, for a short time, till the gossip and wonder have ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... much pride on this collection of virtues, but rather bring yourself to account for your faults. Take just one, the first that comes, impatience, sloth, gossip, uncharitableness, sulkiness, whatever it may ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... not yet noon, the Sergeant and Miss Gracie Williams met on "the big road" near the Rains' store. Those sitting on the store porch—and there was to be but little work done on the farms that day—saw the two meet, bow and pass on. Pall Mall is but little given to gossip. Yet there was a strange story to be carried back to the woman-folk in the homes in the valley and on ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... sauntering about the badly lighted streets of a town where his kenspeckle figure was familiar to every inhabitant. Call this fatalism if you will; but these were not the acts of a coward. I told this story to a friend who was well 'posted' in the club gossip ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... see what that has to do with it. I like the absence from questioning, the avoidance of gossip, as much as you can; but it makes me feel as if I were a living lie to have Mr. Herman bringing his honest love to me to be met only by deception. It is cruel and ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... the girl, coolly. "These gentlemen of the Secret Service are not given to gossip. Mr. Davlin will have but little opportunity for circulating scandal where he is going. Mr. Percy, and your wife, will hardly remain in the neighborhood long enough to injure you here, unless by your own choice. Your sister will scarcely betray you, and the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and it's true what they are saying. I thought it might have been gossip," he muttered, as he pushed the soft dark hair from the temple. "Any more suspicious marks?" he resumed, taking a rapid view of the hands and head. "No; nothing but what he'd be likely to get in the water: ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I have it performed, which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No one indeed ever says anything to me: they know that I would not allow it. Be valiant and CONTENT since Saint-Antoine is doing well and selling ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the name of our enemy in my house?" thundered Kali, glowering at the chattering women. "Bend to your tasks and have done with idle gossip." ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... reference to her, we will take up the thread of our narrative with Mrs. Hsueeh, and the others along with her. During this interval they finished feasting on melons. After some more gossip, each went her own way; and Pao-ch'ai, Tai-yue and the rest of the cousins returned into the garden. Pao-ch'ai then asked Tai-yue to repair with her to the O Hsiang Arbour. But Tai-yue said that she was just going to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... working the apotheosis of a hat; Reynolds, Lawrence, Romney, and West, the American, were forming an English School of Art; George Washington and George the Third were linking their names preparatory to sending them down the ages; Boswell was penning undying gossip; Blackstone was writing his "Commentaries" for legal lights unborn; Thomas Paine was getting his name on the blacklist of orthodoxy; Burke, the Irishman, was polishing his brogue so that he might be known as England's greatest orator; the little Corsican was dreaming dreams of conquest; Wellesley ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. For in the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Acton; she turned to him with all the artless confidence of a little sister. She asked him about her dancing partners, and about her gowns, and she discussed with him all the various bits of small gossip ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... sat down by her husband's side to begin the heavy work of the banquet, and she did so in some measure of restored tranquillity, but nevertheless she shook her head at her gossip to show that in this instance she did not quite approve of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... people meet and greet each other, gossip, and the women inspect with critical eye the dresses of their neighbors, to see if they are ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... nothing, sir, not of the least consequence," returned the old man, embarrassed. "Only women's gossip, sir, and Frenchwomen's gossip ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... is an attitude in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... mine. Else it is indeed here, with thee beside me, that I find all that can bear the name of happiness. The rest of life is but sternest duty—strife, hostility, contempt. But away with this gloomy talk—what gossip is there stirring in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to be genuine beyond all doubt. The disposal of them had been well managed, for when Malipieri moved into the palace there was not a painting of value left on the walls, yet there had been no mention of them in the newspapers, nor any gossip about them, and the public at large believed them to be still in their places. As a matter of fact most of them were already in France and England, and the Velasquez was ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... my small income. They were good-looking, and by repute were virtuous and easy of temper, but when I became acquainted with them I found that I must not expect from them any entertainment save the description of visits to the milliner, or schemes for parties, or the gossip of the country-side. I did not demand, Mr. Rambler, the critical acumen of Mrs. Montagu, or the erudition of Mrs. Carter, but I believe you will agree with me that a wife, and especially the wife of a clergyman ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... to which Mrs. Bundy would require little pressure to tell him even more than she knew. At the same time he hated to appear to pry into the secrets of his absent friend; to discuss her with their bustling hostess resembled too much for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant about an unconscious employer. He left out of account however Mrs. Bundy's knowledge of the human heart, for it was this fine principle that broke down the barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was not meddling ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... years old, but time has dealt lightly with him, and he is still hale and hearty. He knows all the gossip of New York for thirty years back, but also knows how to hold his tongue. To see him in his glory, one should wait until the breaking up of some great party. Then he takes his stand on the steps of the mansion, and in the most pompous ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... I know nought about writing. My business is to sail the ship under your father's orders; but as to talking with merchants who press you with questions, and seem to think that you have nought to do but to stand and gossip, this is not in my way, and I wished sorely that you had been with me, and could have taken all this ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Anderson, "I'll go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times. She will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially in old age, that it ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... liveliest village of the plain, Where Health and Slander welcome every train, Whence smiling innocence, its tribute paid, Retires in terror, wounded and dismayed— Dear lovely bowers of gossip and disease, Whose climate cures us that thy dames may tease, How often have I knelt upon thy green And prayed for death, to mitigate their spleen! How often have I paused on every charm With mingled admiration and alarm— The brook that runs by many ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... was constantly attracted to the Williamses by prominent newspaper allusions to their prosperity and growing fashionable prestige. What they did and where they went were chronicled in the then new style journalistic social gossip, and the every-day world was made familiar with his financial opinions and his equipages and her toilettes. The meeting in the street was an ordeal for Selma. Flossy had been shopping and was about to step into her carriage, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... find it admirable in him. It is his quality, not his defect. Without some touch of it life would be unendurable prose. If I have called the world to which he transports us a world of unreality, I have wronged him. It is only a world of unrealism. It is from pots and pans and stocks and futile gossip and inch-long politics that he emancipates us, and makes us free of that to-morrow, always coming and never come, where ideas shall reign supreme.[318] But I am keeping my readers from the sweetest ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and quickly grasps the situation. First ignored, then made the subject of evil gossip, the temple clash, and now His closest friend subjected to violence, His own rejection is painfully evident. He makes a number of radical changes. His place of activity is changed to a neighboring province under different civil rule; His method, to preaching from place to ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... considered themselves free to enter and leave the town without let or hindrance, until it was practically surrounded by Boers, and they often gathered about the hotel doors listening furtively to every scrap of gossip or news that fell ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... speak of the common talk of girls as being largely idle gossip; criticisms of absent people; unkind words about persons whom the ladies would meet with warm professions of friendship and fervent kisses if they were to come in a ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... his university days was very different, and yet he had lived in what might be called an intellectual set. There had been plenty of easy friendship, abundance of lively gossip, incessant and rather tedious festivities. Men had groaned and grumbled over their work, played games with hearty conviction, had nourished no great illusions about themselves and each other, had had few generous and ardent visions about art, poetry, or humanity; ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... side, which is always in evidence in the case of a celebrated man,—that gossip, for example, which avers that Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write so large a number of pages in so small a number of years without the virtue of industry, a virtue incompatible ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... emotions engendered by experience which one has never had. Yet we all long to be broad in sympathy and inclusive in appreciation; we long, greatly, to know the experience of others. This yearning is probably one of the good but misconceived appetites so injudiciously fed by the gossip of the daily press. There is a hope, in the reader, of getting for the moment into the lives of people who move in wholly different sets of circumstances. But the relation of dry facts in newspapers, however tinged with journalistic ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee—as the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity—nothing more—with the spirit of a mouse. She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with themselves; at least they would ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... was too warm to admit of the wearing of any great display of apparel, and the old man sat hatless and coatless on a sort of settle at the threshold. He was an inveterate old gossip, and was acquainted with the business of everybody in the neighborhood. He knew all about the bargain entered into between Savareen and Squire Harrington, and how it was to be consummated on the following day. Savareen, when riding townwards that morning, had ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... of his wife Olive, as good a soul as ever lived, always hard at work. From early morning until dusky eve she is on her feet. It has always been a matter of gossip and astonishment, among the neighbors, as to how little Mrs. Teed, for she is by no means what you would call a large woman, could work so incessantly without becoming weary and resting for an hour or so after dinner. But she works on all the same, never rests, and they still ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... shallow and illiberal man who disliked Mr. Webster, gives, in his recently published correspondence, the following amusing account of the presentation of the diplomatic corps to President Harrison,—a little bit of contemporary gossip which carries us back to those days better than anything else could possibly do. The diplomatic corps assembled at the house of Mr. Fox, the British minister, who was to read a speech in behalf of the whole body, and thence proceeded to ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... customers in broking offices can be busy. At other times they must lounge, and smoke; and chat, and read, and watch the board. A good-sized concern may easily have two hundred running accounts. Can you imagine a livelier, more entertaining place of gossip? You can have stocks, horses, commerce, law, medicine, small talk, art, science, the theater and religion in fifteen minute causeries, every day if you like. You have the milieu of every club in New York and the Waldorf cafe ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... not in the least like people in a book. I often wonder why Priorsford is so unlike a story-book little town. We're not nearly interested enough in each other for one thing. We don't gossip to excess. Everyone goes his or her own way. In books people do things or are suspected of doing things, and are immediately cut by a feverishly interested neighbourhood. I can't imagine that happening in Priorsford. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... pleasant chat about books, pictures, music, and the gossip of our set. Handsome, intelligent, composed, tastefully dressed, she awakened to the uttermost every admiring sentiment and every manly feeling. When I began to take leave, Miss Mayton's mother insisted that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was no better than gossip and speculation. I had no right to report such things—at all events, so it seemed to me. Now I am going to add something which may be the wildest error, but which cannot trouble you much if you imagine that the story is true. Yesterday, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Myle, whom he was now deriding for his efforts in Paris to save his father-inlaw from his fate, might assist the Advocate in unravelling its contents. He had now discovered that it had been idle gossip not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of this device, and the owner of the dwelling, was a round, rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a very sociable manner. He was the great "gossip" of the place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and they, than Abel Twitt. He had a leisurely way of talking,—a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Mr. Rainer was for going on and taking vengeance on the kidnappers. But Sir Tancred dissuaded him, pointing out that there was no need to have every gossip in Europe talking about Dorothy. If the police, who were in a bustle from Mentone to Genoa, caught them, it must be endured. But Dorothy had escaped unharmed, and the less fuss made about the matter ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... and their turbaned wives and round-eyed daughters, who, in other days, had treated the ruddy sturdy tradeless town,—the solid square houses and wide walled gardens, the streets to-day all grass and gossip, as the scene of a local "season." She would have warrant for the assemblies, dinners, deep potations; for the smoked sconces in the dusky parlours; for the long muddy century of family coaches, "holsters," highwaymen. She would put a finger in short, just as he had done, on the vital spot—the ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... willingly we obeyed the commands of our parents and teachers, how diligent we were in studying, how persevering we were, how often our parents punished our sauciness. Who can say for himself that he was not much more pleased to go out for a walk, to play games, and to gossip, than to go to Church in ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... with; and how this man had jilted his girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had passed between them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her earnings upon drink, and pawned her very clothes. Some people would have scorned this talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... however, the politician's province. The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the subjects of an hour's light talk.(187) Let us return to our humbler duty of Court gossip. Yonder sits our little queen, surrounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome—she calls them beautiful; they were most kind, loving, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knocking against each other. She had questioned Cosette, who had not been able to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had come from Montfermeil. One morning, this spy saw Jean Valjean, with an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the uninhabited compartments of the hovel. She followed him with the step of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through a crack in the door, which was directly opposite ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... attend the transacting of business at Bonsecours Market are in a subdued tone. The fat huckster-women drowsing beside their wares, scarce send their voices beyond the borders of their broad- brimmed straw hats, as they softly haggle with purchasers, or tranquilly gossip together. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I'll admit they did—then. But it's exasperating to know they never give you credit for changing—I almost said, reforming, One ought to be above the gossip of a town like this—but say what you like, it does ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... "I knew the government was looking for somebody to steer the interstellar ship that's been gossip for decades. That job," he said distinctly, "is one I would give a lot to ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... come on a visit to the count, well introduced, and seeking further material for his easy-going history of the times; knowing that foreign knights assembled in Orthez from all countries, and that there were few spots more alive to the sound of the world's doings or better informed in the varying gossip of ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em when their backs is turned," said John Milton gloomily to himself, with a dismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obliged to listen ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... go, Tom; but, to be plain with you, I do not think that I can be of much use there. I have been several times: she will gossip as long as you please; but if you would talk seriously, she turns a deaf ear. You see, Tom, there's little to be gained when you have to contend with such a besetting sin as avarice. It is so powerful, especially ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... come over to marry the Princess Royal of Great Britain IN England is too absurd, to say the least. The Queen must say that there never was even the shadow of a doubt on Prince Frederick William's part as to where the marriage should take place, and she suspects this to be the mere gossip of the Berliners. Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... sleeping, Near at hand their rest they take; But we two, in pleasant gossip, Keep each other ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... journal set up no greater pretensions, for it had to compete with swarms of abusive political pamphlets, such as Swift wrote for the Tories and Defoe for the Whigs (S479). It had also to compete with the gossip and scandal of the coffeehouses and the clubs; for this reason the proprietor found it no easy matter either to fill it or to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... could have my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... little crowd dispersed, and the baby, with its brace of mothers, gone to bed, the new friends sat cozily down and enjoyed an hour or two of feminine gossip, exchanged kisses, cards, and photographs, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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 Duke and that right honourable ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... to spend his evenings with his wife and daughter. It amused him to hear what they had been doing during the day. Their gossip had its value; sentimental or spiteful, it threw quaint sidelights upon character. On the evening before the Faculty meeting Ida was bending over a book, while Mr. Gulmore smoked, and watched her. His daughter was ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... had two wives, one gentle and prepossessing, the other such a gossip that he was often made angry. Neither remonstrances nor beating improved her, and finally he made up his mind to drive her into a wood amongst the hyenas. There she built herself a little hut into which a hyena came and boldly installed herself as mistress. The wife ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... have I walked, divers and sundry waies, And many a good man's house have I bin at in my dais; Many a gossip's cup in my tyme have I tasted, And many a broche and spyt have I both turned and basted ... When I saw it booted nit, out at doores I hyed mee, And caught a slyp of bacon when I saw none spyd mee Which I intend not far hence, unless ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that, if we did not go, we should give some excuse for scandal-mongers to gossip. Yet, should you not like it, you know that there is no need for us to go. Do not think of me, for I prefer our pleasant chat in this room to the heavenly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... functions where literature is also represented, and amusing them at luncheons and dinners, he knew very little of them really. To them he had always remained Mr. Arundel; no one called him Ferdinand; and he only knew the gossip also available to the evening papers and the frequenters of clubs. But he was, however, good at inventing; and as soon as he had come to an end of first-hand knowledge, in order to answer her inquires and keep her there to himself he proceeded to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... days of their youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and curves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend popped out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles through all the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip whispering of peace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees nodded assent, and with the shadows of their outspread fingers stroked the frightened facades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... spoke," I assured her. "And, by the way, if you haven't heard the latest gossip it may interest you to hear that the young rascal has formed an attachment, and is very proud of her fiancee. She is an awfully pretty girl and quite athletic as well—in fact, his arm is not nearly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... Signora Orsola and the Signorina Paolina were installed in their new lodging and the day when the Marchese Ludovico was sitting in the more than modest little room over a miserable morsel of fire, with the two Venetians, when his uncle sent for him to give him the hint about any inconvenient gossip that might be whispered concerning the Signora Bianca Lalli, in accordance with the suggestion of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... local gossip and scandal cleverly concealed. Andrew Hamilton figures in it as "Dapper Dumpling." J. N. Barker, the author of "Superstition," is "Billy Mushroom." Joseph Dennie is nicknamed "Oliver Crank." William Warren is dubbed "the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... blood still dripping from his amber beard, Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer; Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings, Where men for dice each titled gambler flings, To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames, For tea and gossip, like old country dames No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant, Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant, Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs, And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues, Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er, Timed to the pauses of the battery's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the reception they would have given me for bringing a new joy into their castled isolation, new ideas, new passions—a breath of gossip and scandal from the outside world to relieve the intolerable boredom of the middle ages. I should have been kept at the Court of Aix: I think they would have bound me with flower-chains, and my fame would have spread all through the sunny vineyards and grey olive-clad ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way in a month. A man may divulge a secret, say, at St. Paul de Loanda, take ship to Zanzibar, and there his own secret ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... "was an exceedingly proud woman, belonging to a family of social prominence in the East. She felt deeply the causeless gossip connecting her name with the case, as well as the open disgrace of her husband's conviction. She refused to receive her former friends, and even failed in loyalty to your father in his time of trial. It is impossible now to fix the fault clearly, or to account for ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... became the gathering places for wits, fashionable people, and brilliant and scholarly men, to whom they afforded opportunity for endless gossip and discussion. It was only natural that the lively interchange of ideas at these public clubs should generate liberal and radical opinions, and that the constituted authorities should look askance at them. Indeed the consumption of coffee has been curiously associated with movements ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fearful joy," if a joy at all! Soon the driver jumped off for a gossip and a smoke, leaving the elephant to "gang his ain gates" for a mile or more, and he turned into the jungle, where he began to rend and tear the trees, and then going to a mud-hole, he drew all the water out of it, squirted it with a loud noise over himself and his riders, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... which had existed one hundred and ten years, when it was merged, in 1874, by purchase of the copyright, into the Morning Chronicle, in its early days, was nearly the sole exponent of the wants— of the gossip (in prose and in verse)—and of the daily events of Quebec. As such, though, from the standard of to-day, it may seem quaint and puny, still it does not appear an untruthful mirror of social life in the ancient capital. Its centenary number ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... remain unquestioningly, even preferredly, outside the doors of superiority, but out there they raised a clamor of self-assertion. Their tongues wagged with prodigious activity utterly unleashed. In the days before Ina Carroll's wedding all Banbridge seethed and boiled like a pot with gossip, and gossip full of malice and sneer, and a good deal of righteous indignation. Anderson heard much of it. Neither he nor his mother was asked to the wedding. The Carrolls had not even considered the possibility of such a thing. Mrs. Anderson spoke of it one evening ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bridegroom, as well as Mrs. Gray's most intimate friend, enjoyed especial privileges; and as she was not averse to sharing her information and experiences, the entire village joyfully fell upon the morsels of choice gossip with which ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... Queen held, faster or looser, by her bed of sickness, as a main refuge in these emergencies: the last shift of oppressed womankind;—sanctioned by Female Parliament, in this instance. "Has had a miscarriage!" writes Dubourgay, from Berlin gossip, at the beginning of the business. Nay at one time she became really ill, to a dangerous length; and his Majesty did not at first believe it; and then was like to break his heart, poor Bear; aud pardoned Wilhelmina and even Fritz, at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... conventional ecclesiastical furniture. But we still hold a "small-and-early" in the vestibule before service and a "five o'clock" in the chapel afterward. Sunday morning church is a this-world function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in man's nature. We try to get him ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... to wait over—an invitation gladly accepted, as visits to Loringwood were just now especially prized by the neighboring darkies, for the two runaways were yet subjects of gossip and speculation, and Uncle Nelse scattered opinions in the quarters on the absolute foolishness in taking such risks for freedom, and dire prophesies of the repentance ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the great man. "Mrs. Macfadyen and I were on the gossip last night, and I know the whole story ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... dog—and devised dramatic entertainments of such attraction that Jamie Soutar declared them no better than the theatre, and threatened Carmichael with a skep of honey as a mark of his indignation. As for the old women of the Glen, he got round them to that extent that they would gossip with him by the hour over past days, and Betty Macfarlane was so carried by the minister's sympathy that she brought out from hidden places some finery of her youth, and Carmichael was found by Miss Carnegie arranging a faded Paisley shawl on Betty's shoulders. And was it ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren |
