"Gossiping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has not substance enough—few of Sterne's jests have—to stand the process of continual attrition to which he subjects it. But the mere historic gravity with which the various turns of this monomania are recorded—to say nothing of the seldom failing charm of the easy, gossiping style—prevents the thing from ever becoming utterly tiresome. On the whole, however, one begins to grow impatient for more of the same sort as the three admirable chapters on the Rev. Mr. Yorick, and is not sorry ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... previous history as we chose to communicate. The story of every individual's past life, relations, friends, regiment, and soldier experience had been told again and again, until the repetition was wearisome. The cool nights following the hot days were favorable to little gossiping seances like the yarn-spinning watches of sailors on pleasant nights. Our squad, though its stock of stories was worn threadbare, was fortunate enough to have a sweet singer in Israel "Nosey" Payne—of whose tunefulness we ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... in the annals of a great people. We depend for our knowledge of the steps by which England then made a most wonderful stride to prosperity and power, not upon official and authoritative records, but upon the desultory and sometimes merely gossiping memoirs of particular persons, and such other miscellaneous materials as can be picked up. The only consequence of an attempt to extinguish the memory of republicans, radicals, reformers, and regicides has been, that the history of England's true ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of wasting time, one of which is con- temptible, are gossiping mischief, making lingering calls, and mere motion when at work, thinking of nothing or [10] planning for some amusement,—travel of limb more than mind. Rushing around smartly is no proof of ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... golden dishes carried aloft by black slaves attired in white and crimson,—the red glow of poured-out wine; and here, in the drowsy warmth, lounging on divans of velvet and embroidered satin, eating, drinking, idly gossiping, loudly laughing, and occasionally bursting into wild snatches of song, were a company of brilliant-looking personages,—all men, all young, all handsome, all richly clad, and all evidently bent on enjoying the pleasures offered by the immediate hour. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... it," said Miss Pimpernell, sturdily. "Why, if Monsieur Parole d'Honneur took a house, would that be any reason for his getting married? Ah, I know, Frank, who has put all this nonsense in your head! It is that gossiping old Shuffler. I'll give him a lecture when I next catch him," and she shook her fist comically in the air, to the intense wonderment of Miss Spight, who ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... put away her tools and the calf-bound volume she had been working on, and shut and locked her desk. Then she rose. Her eyes swept over the long room, its lower end packed with giggling, whispering, squabbling, listening, gossiping, or reading girls. She ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sister, my aunt, kept the house. She was an old maid of fifty: my father had already left his fortieth year behind him. She was a very pious woman. In fact, to tell the truth, she was a great hypocrite, gossiping and meddlesome, and she did not have a kind heart like my father. We were not poor, but we had no more than we really needed. My father had also a brother, named Gregory, but he had been accused of seditious actions and Jacobinical sentiments (so it ran in the ukase), and he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... should have mentioned that before going to look for the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side of the little place, and that I indulged in this recreation for two definite reasons. One of these was that I had an opportunity of gossiping at a cafe with a conversable young Englishman whom I had met in the afternoon at Tarascon and more remotely, in other years, in London; the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter a splendid mature ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... a faint murkiness in the air it was still day. There was light enough for the four men playing pinochle on the upper deck, though the women of their party, gossiping in chairs grouped near at hand, had at last put aside their embroidery. The girl who sat by herself at a little distance held a magazine still open on her lap. If she were not reading, her attitude suggested it was less because of the dusk than ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... and sagacity has been sunk in benevolent attempts to assist blundering or plundering incapacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to be the mark of bitter taunts from growling creditors and insolent pity from a gossiping public. Much has been said about the pleasures of a good conscience; and among these I reckon the act of that man who, having wickedly lent certain moneys to a casual acquaintance, was in the end called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Not in gossiping, for she had no cronies. Not in millinery and dressmaking, for there were no admiring eyes to reward such labors. Not in gadding, for she might not pass the imprisoning wall. Not even in reading, perhaps because she was not much of a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... surprise he found that his feet sank deep in the softly gathering flakes. He looked to his left as he kept on by the wall; but the guards were not visible though their voices could be heard, and it was evident that they had sheltered themselves among some stones where they were gossiping together. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... through the evening with you, beloved one, as though we were sitting on the sofa in the red drawing-room; and with sympathetic attention to my desire the mail kept for my enjoyment precisely at this gossiping hour your letter, which I should have received by good rights day before yesterday. You know, if you were able to decipher my inexcusably scrawled note [3] from Schlawe, how I struck a half-drunken crowd of hussar officers there, who disturbed me in my writing. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... headstrong, impatient; the second is calmer, stronger, more obedient. He watches the mother; he heeds her signals. Five minutes later he makes a clean, beautiful swoop and comes up with his fish. The mother whistles her praise as she drops beside him. My eyes follow them as, gossiping like two old cronies, they wing their slow way over the dancing whitecaps and climb the ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... but for an hour he had been under the scrutiny of the half-breed, who had been quick to descry the horseman moving through the brush. McFann had been expecting Talpers, and he was none too pleased to find that the trader had sent the gossiping cowpuncher in his stead. Andy, being one of those ingenuous souls who never can catch the undercurrents of life, rattled on, all unconscious of the effect of light words, ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... shrewdness with Aberdeen dialect. In the course of the week after the Sunday on which several elders of an Aberdeen parish had been set apart for parochial offices, a knot of the parishioners had assembled at what was in all parishes a great place of resort for idle gossiping—the smiddy or blacksmith's workshop. The qualifications of the new elders were severely criticised. One of the speakers emphatically laid down that the minister should not have been satisfied, and had in fact made a most unfortunate ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... mysterious in the character of this Polly Jessup. She is particularly solicitous about every thing which relates to you. It has occurred to me, since reading your letter, that she is not entirely without design in her prattle. Something more, methinks, than the mere tattling, gossiping, inquisitive propensity in the way in which ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... periodicals that come to us from D'Oyley's library," said Lady Angleby, pointing to the brown, buff, orange, green, and purple magazines that furnished her round-table. "The novels are well read, so are the social essays and the bits of gossiping biography; but dry chapters of exploration, science, discovery, and politics are tasted, and no more: the first page or two may be opened, and the rest as often as not are uncut. And as they come to Brentwood, so, but for myself, they would go away. The young ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... was so rich, he went to the shoemaker to order another pair of brogues, and being a kindly, gossiping boy, the shoemaker soon learned the whole story of the fairy man and the Rath. And this so stirred up the shoemaker's greed that he resolved to go the very next night himself, to see if he could not dance with the ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... with his old neighbor in her more prosperous surroundings would have been, if only for the sake of later gossiping about it, he felt it would be inconsistent with his pride and his assumption of present business. More than that, he was uneasily conscious that in Mrs. Tucker's simple and unaffected manner there was a greater superiority than he had ever noticed during their previous acquaintance. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... had committed herself so completely regarding her niece, that nothing could have induced her to reconsider her conduct. Every trifle also in Maggie's attitude testified against herself. She resented the constant conclaves of tea-drinking, gossiping women in her house, and she was too honest-hearted to hide her disapproval from them. The result was, that backed by Janet Caird, they came still more frequently, and were more and more offensive. If she determined to make the best of the matter, and remained with ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... in looks and character. Both are attractive girls I judge, although I only had a glimpse of them, and at the time knew nothing of the difference in relationship. I naturally supposed them to be sisters, until Haines and I got to talking about the matter on the way back. Pshaw, Knox, you've got me gossiping like an ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... outside and shouted the girls' names at the top of his voice, but he and Stella were bringing their last load before he saw them coming in at the yard gate. They had been down to the hind's cottage, gossiping with his wife. ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Juhasz will certainly also greatly distinguish himself at the Klausenburg Musical Festival. My lines of introduction to Trefort, the Minister, must no longer be presented to His Excellency as mustard after dinner. The less scribbling and gossiping ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the room door ajar, the negress went and banged it shut. Then, proceeding to hang a clean towel on the washstand, she continued gossiping: ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... the low thoughts that are apt to mar our persistency in unobtrusive and unrecognised work is set before us in this story. There are many temptations to-day, dear brethren, what with gossiping newspapers and other means of publicity for everything that is done, for men to say, 'Well, if I cannot get any notice for my work ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... he might have a chance of getting the place. The young man lost no time, but walked up to the castle and asked if they were in want of a gardener; and how happy he was when they agreed to take him! Now he passed most of his day in gossiping with the servants about the wealth of their masters and the wonderful things in the house. He made friends with one of the maids, who told him the history of the snuffbox, and he coaxed her to let him see it. One evening she managed to get hold of it, and the young man watched ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... civilized places had made me forget. These doors are divided into two portions, not vertically like ours, but horizontally. The upper portion is generally open, in order that the housewife sitting within may have light and air in her room, and an opportunity of gossiping with her neighbours across the street; the lower part is closed, to prevent the pigs in the daytime from entering the house (where they sleep at night). The system testifies to social instincts and a certain sense ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... saluted by the patients in the military fashion. The doctors' visit over, the patients were assembled for prayers; after which, and until the dinner-hour—a quarter to twelve—the time was spent in out-door exercise. From twelve till two the patients sat on their stools reading or gossiping. At two they went out again to exercise. At half-past three they were again assembled for prayers. About five they got tea and dry bread, as at breakfast; and at eight o'clock they ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... airing when his life of sedentary dignity grew burdensome. One afternoon, when he had driven to the market town, his daughter and her guest were in the garden together, gathering broad beans and gossiping ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... a gossiping and ever most welcome New Haven friend for the following anecdote of one of the men who, clothed in a little brief ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... desirous," said the Colonel, courteously, "I should be unable. In fact, what I have told is the sum of my knowledge. I could, indeed, indulge in surmises based on rumor, but that were too much like the gossiping of old women, and both unbecoming in me to speak and in you to hear, more especially as that rumor attaints in other respects the fair fame of your friend. It is different with the base-born scullions around us, who are licensed ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the night some ten miles or so from Arnay-le-Duc, and I was gossiping with Roger Braund and several of the Englishmen—their numbers by this time, alas! had thinned considerably—when Felix came up hastily, his ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... belong to the splendid square which bears the patron's name and which is the centre of Venetian life so far (this is pretty. well all the way indeed) as Venetian life is a matter of strolling and chaffering, of gossiping and gaping, of circulating without a purpose, and of staring—too often with a foolish one—through the shop-windows of dealers whose hospitality makes their doorsteps dramatic, at the very vulgarest rubbish in all ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with a thick layer of soot from the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night. In rainy weather they sit round the fire, smoking, gossiping and working on some tool,—a club or a fine basket. Each clan has its own gamal, which is strictly taboo for the women, and to each gamal belongs a dancing-ground like the one described. On Vao there are five, corresponding to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... gossiping with that young squirrel!" she snapped. "I'll have you know that I'm not shaken up at all. But I'd shake you up if I could get ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... your father and me company. We've been gossiping all afternoon. Nobody to bother us but ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... would make when anyone insisted on talking with him was that he couldn't waste his time gossiping, because he had ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... laughed Irene. "We have more than an idea, haven't we, Audrey? The steps catch our eye every time we pass, they have improved so. Why, there are Faith and the children back from their walk. Oh, my, how we have been gossiping." ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... children among these nomads always seem industriously engaged, the former with domestic duties about the tents, and the latter tending the flocks; but the men put in most of their unprofitable lives loafing, sleeping, and gossiping. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the due politenesses with the hostess had been exchanged. The woods were fairly ablaze with bonfires and hanging lanterns, making a strangely brilliant and fantastic scene. Here and there rugs were spread out on the grass for the older people to congregate upon in gossiping groups, while the young ones had speedily converted a large, smooth spot of lawn into an impromptu dancing-ground, and were whirling merrily away to the music of the band, in the very face of the scandalized Mrs. Upjohn. This last field of action was the first to attract ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... Brainard Macauley. Tom abused himself for his wild notion of cheering his visitor with these people who had no talk, and who, if they drifted out of commonplace froth, had no medium to float them unless they sailed the currents, of local personality, and he mentally upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... is to look and see if it did not end as I said it would. And Loretta—" here she rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which brought tears to the impressionable girl's eyes, "don't go gossiping about me downstairs. I sha'n't be sick long. I am going to be better soon, very soon. By the time you see me here again I shall be quite like my old self. Forget how—how"—and Loretta said she seemed ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the neighborhood, who has been caught out in the tempest. But you had better go and change your clothes than to stand here gossiping," said ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories, and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings in the dark, he is not surprised, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had not at all interfered with the attachment of the two; and few things would have roused Flint to such enthusiasm as this expectation of a fortnight—a leisurely, gossiping, garrulous, quarrelsome fortnight—with his old friend. The prospect of the visit was a better tonic than any contained in the little doctor's black-box. Indeed it drove all thoughts of doctors and their medicines so completely out of his head ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lately took occasion, in passing, to class Charles Reade with the clever writers of the day, sandwiching him between Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins,—for no other reason, apparently, than that he never, with Chinese accuracy, gives us gossiping drivel that reduces life to the dregs of the commonplace, or snarls us in any ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... legs, or a wooden horse. Occasionally a man lurched past, almost as full as he could carry. Sometimes a good husband came along with his family, peacefully. But usually the women and children were alone. The stay-at-home mothers stood gossiping at the corners of the alley, as the twilight sank, folding their ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the railroad yards, and the rumbling thunder of the Seventh Street local slowing down in its run from the Mole to stop at West Oakland station. From the street came the noise of children playing in the summer night, and from the steps of the house next door the low voices of gossiping housewives. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... action (since her mother's death such a time had now elapsed) had little inclined her to submit to rules as to hours and associates, to regulate her dress by a mistress's ideas of propriety, to lose the dear feminine privileges of gossiping with a merry neighbour, and working night and day to help one who was sorrowful. Besides all this, the sayings of her absent, the mysterious aunt Esther, had an unacknowledged influence over Mary. She knew she was very ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tropical, the workmen of Beorminster had received their wages, so they were converting the coin of the realm into beer and whisky as speedily as possibly. The night was calm and comparatively cool with the spreading darkness, and the majority of the inhabitants were seated outside their doors gossiping and taking the air. Children were playing in the street, their shrill voices at times interrupting the continuous chatter of the women; and The Derby Winner, flaring with gas, was stuffed as full as it could hold with artizans, workmen, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... would," was the reply; "but one can't take up a professional man's time for nothing, and I couldn't afford to pay him. And that reminds me that I'm taking up your time by gossiping about my purely ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... those rather awkward excuses which we all sometimes practise in society; and who, in short, is the least ethereal spirit that was ever met with outside a table. De Foe's extraordinary love for supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent pieces of advice on occasion; but ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and kicked together the logs in the fireplace. This fireplace was one of the great room's comforts as well as ornaments. The logs leaped into much accession of flame, and crackled into sparks, and these went gossiping up the mighty chimney, their little fiery voices making a low, soft roaring like the talk ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... empty-handed. Lorilleux carried a bottle of fine wine under each arm and his wife brought a large custard pie from a famous pastry shop on Chaussee Clignancourt. But the Lorilleuxs made sure that the entire neighborhood knew they had spent twenty francs. As soon as Gervaise learned of their gossiping, furious, she stopped giving ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... following the dawn when the world was at its sweetest, when the chattering weaver birds went in and out of their hanging nests gossiping loudly, and faint perfumes from little morning flowers gave the air an ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... to college, came home to the funeral, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left, for he brought a wife with him. What she was and where she was born he never informed us. She evinced a dislike to Heathcliff, and drove him to the company of the servants, but Cathy clung to him, and the two promised to grow up together as rude as savages. Once Hindley ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cups?" demanded the grandson, cheerfully. "I don't know when I have had such a walk!" and they began a gay gossiping hour together, and parted for a short season afterward, only to meet again at dinner, with a warm sense of pleasure in each other's company. The young man always insisted that his grandmother was the most charming woman in the world, and it can ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... symbolic Aco. And then, at a half-hour's walk, there was the pretty pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life:—the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their toilets; children sprawling in the dirt, chasing each other, shouting; men drinking, playing mora, quarrelling, laughing, singing, twanging mandolines, at the tables under the withered bush of the wine-shop; ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... those streets where the tall houses cast a deep shadow on the flagstones of the road, the figures of a few slaves might here and there be seen sleeping against the walls, or gossiping languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child crawled ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... have you come with us to Geneva," she said to Rodolphe. "It is a gossiping town. Though I am far above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I make it my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, my only protector. We are leaving; stay here a few days. When you come on to Geneva, call first on ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... motive, or character? Every young man and woman must have a reputation; if it is not good it is bad, there is no middle ground. Young people who are running in the streets after dark, boisterous and noisy in their conversation, gossiping and giggling, flirting with first one and then another, will soon settle their matrimonial prospects among good society. Modesty is a priceless jewel. No sensible young man with a future ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... your iniquity; making your victims believe, it is all out of your sincere regard for them; assuring them (as Betty says in the man of the world,) "That indeed you are no busybody that loves fending nor proving, but hate all tittling and tattling, and gossiping and backbiting," ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... stores and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of Gunnar of Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other cases, were the dyngfur, or ladies' chambers, their "bowers" (Thalamos, like that of Telemachus in the courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The dyngja was originally called bur, our "bower"; the ballads say "in bower and hall." In the ballad of MARGARET, her parents are said to put her in the way of deadly sin by building her a bower, apparently separate from the main building; she would have been safer in an upper ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... grows audible, carried on by two persons in the crowd beneath the open windows. Their dress being the native one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officers to be merely inhabitants gossiping; and their ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it—and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... was a moonless evening as she walked side by side with her cousin down Hillside Avenue. It was one of the first warm evenings of the Spring and the neighbors were on their porches, or gossiping at the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... pleased, select her own companions, coquette, talk, dance, without ever thinking of her mother or being sought for by her, till the end of the evening. It was enough she was with Lady Helen, to silence all gossiping tongues and to satisfy her father, who, one of the most devoted members of the Lower House, scarcely ever visited such places of amusement, and therefore knew not the conduct of either his wife or daughter. He long since ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Jeff. "Our young friend who's at the bottom of the whole of this. Here, Sir! I'm going to teach you a lesson that will make you cautious about gossiping with strange old men. Pick up that leopard ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... do know is, that there is somewhere in this world a man whom I wanted to kill. Gossiping people betrayed his name to me. I went to him, and told him that I demanded satisfaction, and that I hoped he would conceal the real reason for our encounter even from our seconds. He refused to give me satisfaction, on the ground that he did not owe me any, that you ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... night; she had other sorts of association with this summit in the daytime. All her life she had been used to come here berrying. Here she came, too, with Polly Wilson and other girl-friends—when she had any—for strolls and gossiping. Here, too, Jim Breen had made love to her, and Matt's companion of the grocery. The spot being therefore not wholly dedicated to memories of Claude, she could ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... execution elevated through Byron's song to the world of poetry. Rudy was sad, he lent over the broad stone sill of the window, gazed into the deep blue water and over to the little solitary island with its three acacias and wished himself there, free from the whole gossiping society. Babette was remarkably merry, she had been indescribably amused. The ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... came upstairs. But I never remember to have been otherwise than wide awake, nervously awake, wearily awake. This was the vexation. I was not a strong child, and had a very excitable brain; and the torture that it was to hear those maids gossiping on the other side of the dim red light of my screen I cannot well describe, but I do most distinctly remember. I tossed till the clothes got hot, and threw them off till I got cold, and stopped my ears, and pulled the sheet over my face, and tried ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... great district on account of its spacious pavement—less frequented than usual; but there were still numbers of people about, some hastening homewards, some sauntering hither and thither in the familiar way, some gathered into gossiping groups. Kirkwood was irritated by the conversation and laughter that fell on his ears, irritated by the distant strains of the band, irritated above all by the fume of frying that pervaded the air for many yards about Mrs. Tubbs's precincts. He observed that the customers tending that way ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... simple. When I visit people whom I like, such as Madame de Sallus and yourself, I do not expect to meet the Paris that flutters from house to house in the evening, gossiping and scandalizing. I have had my experience of gossip and tittle-tattle. It needs only one of these talkative dames or men to take away all the pleasure there is for me in visiting the lady on whom I happen to have called. Sometimes when I am anchored perforce upon my seat, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... soon learned "bring me," "fetch me," and other verbs. When the old woman was present, the two girls were silent and shy; but as Quizmoa was fond of gossiping, and so was greatly in request among the neighbors, who desired to learn something of the habits of the white man, she was often out; and the girls were then ready to talk as much as Roger wished. For a time it seemed to him that he was making no progress whatever with the language and, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... it was "The Prince" was written. All day he went about his personal affairs, saw homely neighbours, dealt with his family, gave vent to everyday passions. He would sit in the shop of Donato del Corno gossiping curiously among vicious company, or pace the lonely woods of his estate, book in hand, full of bitter meditations. In the evening he returned home and went to his study. At the entrance, he says, he pulled off his peasant clothes covered with the dust ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... is pictured below that. We in the audience are privileged characters. Generally attending the show in bunches of two or three, we are members of the household on the screen. Sometimes we are sitting on the near side of the family board. Or we are gossiping whispering neighbors, of the shoemaker, we will say, with our noses pressed against the pane ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the conversation Richard passed the gossiping squires. He raised his hat, but none returned the courtesy. A Yorkshireman has, at least, the merit of perfect honesty in his likes and dislikes; and if Richard had cared to ask what offense he had given, he would have been told his fault ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... [Greek], ut est in proverbio, by which it appears that barbers and their shops were as remarkable for gossiping and tittle-tattle in ancient as they are in modern times. Aristophanes mentions them in his "Plutus," they are recorded also by Plutarch, and Theophrastus styles ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... little sitting-room opening off this hallway. One or two couples are chatting and gossiping therein, but Abbot steps past them to the window and gazes out. As he expected, there is a view of one end of the veranda, and there she stands, looking far out ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... finishing the rite of shaving, and thinking the while that he would give all that he possessed, including Surry, if he could whisk Jack and himself to the cool, pine slope in the Sierras where was their mine. Every day of waiting and gossiping over the duel had but fostered the feeling of antagonism among the men of the valley, and whatever might be the outcome of that encounter, Dade could see no hope of avoiding an open clash between the partisans of the two combatants. Valencia and Pancho and two or three others of the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the other side, that it is for want of merry company; for want of physic; and therefore they advise them to leave off reading, going to sermons, the company of sober people; and to be merry, to go a gossiping, to busy themselves in the things of this world, not to sit musing alone, &c. But come, poor ignorant sinner, let me deal with thee. It seems thou art turned counsellor for Satan: I tell thee thou knowest not what thou dost. Take heed of spending thy judgment ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... poor women, as well as among rich ones, as they grow older, how much gossiping, tale-bearing, slandering, there is, and that too among people who call themselves religious. Yes, I say slandering; I put that in too; for I am certain that where the first two grow, the third is not far off. If gossiping is the root, tale- bearing and harsh judgment is the stem, and plain ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... by her unwonted seriousness, and, in particular, by her determination not to speak of the misconduct of Trefusis, which was now the prevailing topic of conversation in the family. She listened in silence to gossiping discussions of his desertion of his wife, his heartless indifference to her decease, his violence and bad language by her deathbed, his parsimony, his malicious opposition to the wishes of the Janseniuses, his cheap tombstone with the insulting epitaph, his association with ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... find it hard to answer that question," said the gossiping Mr. Brown. "In great things he is very lavish and ostentatious, but in small things he is very penurious and saving, and miser-like; and all for one son, who is deformed and very sickly. He seems to dote on that boy; and now I have got two or ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... We couldn't stay gossiping over the engagement any longer, so we left it at that. The man lunching at the next table might have concluded that Johnny's sister had got engaged to a scoundrel, instead of to the talented, promising, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... I've got to begin," said Mildred. "So why delay? I'd gain nothing. I'd simply start Hanging Rock to gossiping—and start Mr. Presbury to acting like a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... almost be termed a land of listeners. An island, that is cut off from much communication with the rest of the earth, and from which two-thirds of the males must be periodically absent, would be very likely to reach perfection in the art of gossiping, which includes that of ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... women. Now then, my dear," he continued, turning to his wife, "that suspicion you just voiced didn't grow in your head. Somebody put it there—and God knows it found fertile soil. Out with it now, wife! Who've you been gossiping with?" ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... the gossiping old chronicler describes a conversation between the governor of Tierra Firme and Almagro, at which the writer was present. It is told with much spirit; and is altogether so curious, from the light it throws on the characters of the parties, that I have thought the following translation, which ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... roofless house every here and there seems to protest the contrary. The women are more than well- favoured, and the men fine tall fellows; but they look slipshod and dissipated. As they slouched at street corners, or stood about gossiping in the snow, it seemed they would have been more at home in the slums of a large city than here in a country place betwixt a village and a town. I heard a great deal about drinking, and a great deal about religious revivals: ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chase; cultivates the little patch of maize, pumpkins, and pulse, which furnishes a great part of their provisions. Their time for repose and recreation is at sunset, when, the labors of the day being ended, they gather together to amuse themselves with petty games, or hold gossiping convocations on the tops of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... the road. Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... will never be rich. He takes too much time for philosophy and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... dear; and there: I mustn't stop gossiping, for I've my fire to light, my kitchen to do; but I hate people to be miserable. I can't abide it. There's plenty of worries with one's work, as I told missus only yesterday. There, good-bye, and ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub; the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her out ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... Provided Germany is insane. It's that war, like some sort of bee in Rendezvous' brains, that is driving him along the road now to Market Saffron—he always keeps to the roads because they are severer—through all the dust and sunshine. When he might be here gossiping.... ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... this morning gossiping (which he likes); he gave me an account of his discovery of the head of Charles I. in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, to which he was directed by Wood's account in the 'Athenae Oxonienses.' He says that they also found the coffin of Henry VIII., but that the air ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... public difficulties. Of this kind was her intercourse with the three sons of Bishop Burnet, all individuals of intelligence and accomplishment, but all in early life struggling with fortune. The character of the bishop himself is best known from his works: gossiping, giddiness, and imprudence in taking every thing for granted that he had heard, but honesty in telling it, belonged to the bishop as much as to his books. The chances of the Revolution placed him in the way of preferment; chances, however, which, if they had turned the other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of more than ordinary interest in domestic life were passing in the palaces of his noble, or the houses of his citizen subjects. His medium for the attainment of this end was a powerful telescope, placed at one of his upper windows! The principal minister to his gossiping propensities was one Captain C——, a man of great learning, but doubtful morality, selected, of course, for the office of scandalous chronicler, from his experiences in what, in lay countries, the carnally-minded term "life." When, between his telescopic observations, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Point is skimming across to the head of Middle Bay, where the new ship can distinctly be discerned standing upon her ways, while moving clusters of people were walking up and down her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity. All sorts of gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exhaustion from his daily grind in a newspaper office. No man ever made less of a grind than he in preparing copy for the printer. He seldom arrived at the office before eleven o'clock and never settled down to work before three o'clock. The interim was spent in puttering over the exchanges, gossiping with visitors, of whom he had a constant stream, quizzing every other member of the staff, meddling here, chaffing there, and playing hob generally with the orderly routine of affairs. He was a persistent, insistent, irrepressible disturber of everything but the good-fellowship of the office, to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... She never misses an opportunity, I warrant you, of showing herself off in her last new kirtle and gown. But I must be going down; there is no one below, and if a customer comes and finds the shop empty he will have but a poor idea of me, and will think that I am away gossiping instead of ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... admirer Lord Peterborough. Senesino and Cuzzoni, however, were indispensable to the success of the opera, and probably the ridiculous affectations of the one and the abominable manners of the other were not without their attraction to a public which could enjoy all the pleasure of gossiping about them without having to put up with them ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... although it's a safe bet that a heap of 'em was lies. Men folks have a way of lyin' about women that way, even where they'll tell the truth about everything else. They've got women beaten ninety-seven ways gossiping ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... gossip which would bore a stranger, and yet I fear many friends confine themselves to a kind of talk which unfits them for general society. You prohibit "talking shop," by which you sometimes mean subjects which are interesting to all intelligent people, and yet you talk gossiping "shop" about the mere accidents of school life. But, unless you interweave thoughtful interests and sensible topics of conversation with your friendship, it cannot last. There must be the tie of a common higher interest—it may be a common work, or intellectual sympathy, or, best of all, oneness ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... "Evangeline," and passed terrifying examinations in ancient history, geography, and advanced problems in arithmetic. By the time she left school she was a tall, giggling, black-eyed creature, to be found walking up and down Mission Street, and gossiping and chewing gum on almost any sunny afternoon. Between her mother's whining and her father's bullying, home life was not very pleasant, but at least there was nothing unusual in the situation; among all the girls that Emeline knew there was not one who could go back to a clean room, a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... daughter, whom he named Rebecca, was born. These two links of love made his wife more dear to him. At times she was pleasant; but usually she studied to thwart his will. She was humbled with the cavaliers and hated the Puritans. Ann Linkon, an old woman given to gossiping, incurred the displeasure of Dorothe Stevens, because she gossiped about her extravagance. She had her arrested, condemned and ducked as we have seen. There was no open rupture between Dorothe and her husband's relatives. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... late, ate breakfast leisurely, and after an hour of looking over the paper and gossiping with the hotel clerk about the holdup he called casually upon the deputy sheriff. Only one thing of importance he gleaned from him. This was that the roan with the white stockings had been picked up seven miles from Noches the morning after ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... hear is a masterpiece and has added enormously to your reputation." Mr. Stuart bowed low at the compliment, well pleased that Mr. Jefferson should have heard so favorably of that wonderful picture of his which had set all London gossiping and had caused Mr. Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds (so 'twas said) some pangs of envy. "As for myself, however," went on Mr. Jefferson, "I can scarcely credit that it is a greater piece of work than the portrait of General Washington ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Spring, as gossiping a rag as ever was printed. I expect there will be a fine column in it if ever it gets its prying nose into this day's doings. However, we are mum and her ladyship is mum, and, my word! his lordship is mum, though he did, in his passion, raise the hue and cry on you. Here it ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outside her mother's premises. Moreover, the numerous soldiers, regular and otherwise, that haunted Overcombe and its neighbourhood, were getting better acquainted with the villagers, and the result was that they were always standing at garden gates, walking in the orchards, or sitting gossiping just within cottage doors, with the bowls of their tobacco-pipes thrust outside for politeness' sake, that they might not defile the air of the household. Being gentlemen of a gallant and most affectionate nature, they naturally turned their heads ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Gourlay's "quarriers"—as the quarry horses had been named—came through the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets, washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up, their heads tossing to the hill. The ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... for after all the debate was important, and the hour of the division drew near; and when the question was put and the bell rang, nearly half the House trooped out with virtuous air to join the other half, persistently gossiping in the lobby, and, with them, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... worry about her! Do you know you are in high favor here, and any one who belongs to you gets good quarters? Your grandmother just now is at supper, I doubt not, with my mother; and a jolly time they will have of it, gossiping together." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... so happened that day, that Neykia, she of woodland grace and beauty, was strolling in the sunshine with her Little Pine; while on every side the trees were shaking their heads and it seemed gossiping about the hunting plans of that reckless little elfin hunter, Hymen, who was hurrying overland and shooting his joyous arrows in every direction, till the very air felt charged with the whisperings of countless lovers. It ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... been bousing it over a pot of yellow wine in the pantry with his old crony, Master Rudolph, the steward; and the two, chatting and gossiping together, had passed the time away until long after the rest of the castle had been wrapped in sleep. Then, perhaps a little unsteady upon his feet, Schwartz Carl betook himself homeward to ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... which surely must soon or late visit her! Then, half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte of his age, Soames took out his watch. Past four! Fleur was late. She had gone to his niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that. He heard the boy laugh, and say eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this by one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... delay, amused himself very well, partly in gossiping with Sir Hugo and in answering his questions about Grandcourt's affairs so far as they might affect his willingness to part with his interest in Diplow. Also about Grandcourt's personal entanglements, the baronet knew enough already for Lush to feel released from silence on a sunny autumn ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... There are other points of view which I cannot now state to you, in which the result I speak of may seriously affect the main question. Let me therefore entreat your serious attention to this matter. Be careful of this. Your city is a gossiping place, & what you tell to one man in confidence is soon in the mouths of hundreds. You can impress our friends on this subject without connecting ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... horse and gone to the village on an errand, a rare thing for him to do after dark, so Rod was thinking, as he sat in the living-room learning his Sunday-School lesson on the same evening that the men were gossiping at the brick store. His aunt had required him, from the time when he was proficient enough to do so, to read at least a part of a chapter in the Bible every night. Beginning with Genesis he had reached Leviticus and had made up his mind that the Bible was a much more difficult book than "Scottish ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... go into the Rathaus, followed by all the men. Exit ANSELM with the Holy Book into the Minster.—The children play Mouse, to and fro, round about the PIPER.—The women, some of them, spin on the doorsteps, with little hand distaff's, or stand about, gossiping. ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... published the 'Life of Richard Nash', apparently the outcome of special holiday-visits to the then fashionable watering-place of Bath, whence its fantastic old Master of the Ceremonies had only very lately made his final exit. It is a pleasantly gossiping, and not unedifying little book, which still holds a respectable place among its author's minor works. But a recently discovered entry in an old ledger shows that during the latter half of 1762 he must have planned, if he had not, indeed, already in part composed, a far more important effort, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... my gossip from you," said Hamilton, smiling from the hearth rug, "and considering the labours of the past three months—but tell me about her. I believe I love you best when gossiping. Your effort to be caustic is the sweetest thing in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton |
