This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Gossip is none the less gossip because it comes from venerable antiquity." - Mandell Creighton
"Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading are read." - George Dawson
"Gossip is only the lack of a worthy theme." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed." - Erica Mann Jong
"Gossip, unlike river water, flows both ways." - Michael Korda
"The difference between gossip and philosophy lies only in one's way of taking a fact." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"You must see the infinite, i.e., the universal, in your particular, or it is only gossip." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Gossip kills three: the speaker, the spoken of, and the listener." - Midrash or The Midrash NULL
"Gossip … has caused infinitely more sorrow in life than murder. It is drunkenness of the tongue; it is assassination of reputations. It runs the cowardly gamut from mere ignorant, impertinent intrusion into the lives of others to malicious slander ... He who listens to this crime of respectability without protest is as evil as he who speaks. One strong, manly voice of protest, of appeal to justice, of calling halt in the name of charity—could fumigate a room from gossip as a clear, sharp winter wind kills a pestilence." - William George Jordan
"I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry." - Learned Hand, fully Billings Learned Hand
"Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred." - Booth Tarkington, born Newton Booth Tarkington
"An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things." - Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
"I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc. " - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL
"One who believes in gossip has no self-discipline." - Philippine Proverbs, aka Philipino, Filipino, Ilocano and Tagalog Proverbs, Salawikain or Sawikain
"Whispering a gossip is louder than shouting it." - Philippine Proverbs, aka Philipino, Filipino, Ilocano and Tagalog Proverbs, Salawikain or Sawikain
"He who despises the sick will not see light, and the day of him who turns his face from a man grieved by affliction will become darkness. The sons of the man who scorns the voice of one suffering hardship will grope their way, being struck with blindness." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL
"When myth meets myth, the collision is very real." - Stanislaw Lec, fully Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz
"The Gross man is one who will insult freeborn women; who, in a theatre, will applaud when others cease, and hiss the actors who please the rest of the spectators." - Theophrastus NULL
"The only way to beat the lawyers is to die with nothing." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it." - Walter Winchell
"A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
"Who has never been burned in the sun won't know the value of shadow. (Meaning: One will not appreciate something, if they haven't ever been in need of it.)" - Turkish Proverbs
"Forsooth, ye have heard it said that ye shall do well in this world that in the world to come ye may live happily for ever; do ye well then, and have your reward both on earth and in heaven; for I say to you that earth and heaven are not two but one; and this one is that which ye know, and are each one of you a part of, to wit, the Holy Church, and in each one of you dwelleth the life of the Church, unless ye slay it." - William Morris
"Let a woman retire late to bed, but rise early to duties; let her nor dread tasks by day or by night. Let her not refuse to perform domestic duties whether easy or difficult. That which must be done, let her finish completely, tidily, and systematically, When a woman follows such rules as these, then she may be said to be industrious." - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
"All phenomena are intricately and dynamically interrelated." - Dong Zhongshu, aka Dǒng Zhòngshū or Tung Chung-shu
"The way we see what God is only a reflection of the way we see Anfsnna. If not God brings to our minds to fear and blame, it means that a great deal of fear and blame is flowing in our souls, but if we saw God full of love and compassion , we will be well" - Elif Safak
"Romeo, Romeo! Ah! Why art thou Romeo? Disowns his father, robs you of the name, or if you do not want to swear unless you love me, why stop being a Capulet soon." - William Shakespeare
"SALERIO: Why, I am sure if he forfeit thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for? SHYLOCK: To bait fish withal—if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge." - William Shakespeare
"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it." - Elizabeth Drew, aka Elizabeth Brenner
"Everything's wrong on Wikipedia." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"On September , when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Precocious children will mean much trouble later on." - Italian Proverbs