"Gossip" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel as if I couldn't be I—as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again—it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul. Oh, Anne, I dread it all—the gossip and wonderment and questioning. When I think of that, I wish that I need not have come home at all. Dr. Dave was at the station when I came off the train—he brought me home. Poor old man, he feels ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enthusiasm; but a very tolerable dinner had an inspiriting effect, and I was pleased to learn that there was a bin of old Madeira in the cellar. Naturally I soon grew cheerful, and consequently talkative; and summoned Mrs. Balk for a little gossip. The substance of what I gathered from her rather diffusive ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 1703, and the story of her triumph, brief as it is, sounds quaint and pretty, as it comes down to us laden with a thousand suggestions of fashionable life in the reign of Queen Anne—a life made up of gossip and cards, drinking, gaming, patches and powder, fine clothes, full perriwigs and empty heads. What a picturesque lot of people there must have been at the great English spa that season, all anxious to get a glimpse of her plump majesty, who was staying ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... British vessel; for it was rumoured that French officers had said that King Island would afford a good station for the command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British ships. This was probably mere gossip. Baudin in his interviews with Governor King at Sydney disclaimed any intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land; but he afterwards stated that he did not know what were the plans of the French Government with regard ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... ten o'clock breakfast, and discussed the foreign news with him in a manner Julia thought extraordinarily clever; and at eleven came with the baby into her mother's sunny morning-room for a little feminine gossip over Malcolm's second breakfast. Barbara never left a note unanswered, no old friend was neglected; tea hour always found the shady side porch full of callers, children strayed from the candy on the centre table to the cakes near the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... also a reverse side. Perhaps the general absence of higher education among German women leaves them an especial prey to idle curiosity and gossip. Not only is one questioned freely as to the cost of any article of dress by comparative strangers, but questions as to one's family and private affairs are common, almost customary. Conversation which does not turn upon ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... desired that his friend van der 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 worthy of a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... such respect that many congregate there because of them, and to enrich their minds with inventions and foolishness which they immediately run through the city to bring to the ears of the said personalities. It is impossible to believe what freedom is permitted, in furnishing this gossip. They speak without reverence not only of the doings of generals and ministers of state, but also mix themselves in the life of the Kaiser ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... will stand for a long time looking at you from a distance, if anything unusual attracts their attention. They are very critical and there is much gossip going on among them. They also laugh at the Mexicans, and say that the hair on their faces is like the fur on a bear. Squint-eyes also afford them much amusement. They are smart, attentive and patient. They have no qualms of conscience about telling an ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual devices, and cunning was ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... gregarious, pleasure-loving State has not? There were many simple gaieties, dances, picnics, and the like, which took no account of distance or other obstacles to the natural coming together of young men and girls, and of older folk who have exchanged gallantry for gossip. In this life, the mistress of Storm held a certain place. No farmers' dinner, no fair, or barbecue, was complete without the presence of the county's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Gossip, however, was not silent; it was remarked that Sir Robert never appeared at the race-ground, which was the only place of public resort which he frequented, except in company with a certain strange-looking person, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... had hardly been aware of the severity with which I had been taken to task the day after my first lecture. People are too strong and busy in New York City to notice if you are ill or not; they have paid their dollars and are not likely to listen to what bores them; they wanted a little local gossip about my husband, Mr. Lloyd George, or Princess Mary's trousseau. I did not mind the abuse as I am press-proof, but I did not want to disappoint my manager, Mr. Lee Keedick, a competent, kind man, quite unmercenary, ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... DEPARTMENT will embrace, in addition to vigorous and fearless comments on the events of the times, genial gossip with the reader on all current topics, and also devote abundant space to those racy specimens of American wit and humor, without which there can be no perfect exposition of our national character. Among those who will contribute regularly to this department may be mentioned the name ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... making rude ornaments from beads, and cloves, and nuts, the Mullah drones the evening prayer. Few white men have seen, and returned to tell the tale. But we may imagine the conversation passing from the prices of arms and cattle, the prospects of the harvest, or the village gossip, to the great Power, that lies to the southward, and comes nearer year by year. Perhaps some former Sepoy, of Beluchis or Pathans, will recount his adventures in the bazaars of Peshawar, or tell of the white officers he has followed and fought for in the past. He will speak ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... therefore not as idle gossip, but only as a characteristic touch, that I mention that Frau Sophie even as "gracious lady" could not get rid of her early habit. Her clothes always fitted her as if they had been given to her by her mistress. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... 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
... and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be said so soon. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... breath of life; he worshipped her. Then one day she died—suddenly—sank down and died as a butterfly might die, chilled by a blast. With her Henry Floyd buried his youth. For a time people were sympathetic; but they began immediately to speculate about him, then to gossip about him. It made no difference to him or in him. He was like a man that is dead, who felt no more. One thing about a great sorrow is that it destroys all lesser ones. A man with a crushed body does not feel pinpricks. Henry Floyd went on his way calmly, doggedly, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Nell and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about it, as I see them coming, on gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he went halfway down the walk to meet the girls ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the roar of strange beasts, the ring of strange voices, the crackling of whips; there are prancing steeds and figures in costumes curious,—then, flapping of canvas, creaking of poles, and all is silent. Of course it is not real, and every one may go. The circus has no annals, knows no gossip, presents no problems; it is without morals and therefore not immoral. It is the one joyous amusement that is not above, but quite outside the pale of criticism and discussion. Therefore, why should not the preacher go and take ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... she always looked fearfully sad. Daddy is fond of sketching, and he painted a picture of her standing with her donkey under the vines. We guessed somehow that she had a history, and we asked Sareda, our cook, about her. Sareda knew everybody in the place. She was a dear old gossip. She got quite excited over Luigia's story. She said it had been the talk of Tarana at the time. Luigia used to be a lovely girl when she was young, and she was quite wealthy for a peasant, because she owned a little lemon grove on the hillside. She inherited it from her father, who ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... that night I jotted down pages of such gossip in a little red note-book. I had names and dates. That bunch of piece-workers must have thought I was a bear for details, or else nutty in the head; but they was too polite to mention it so long as I insisted each time that it was ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... conversation has filled me with thoughts too solemn for careless utterance. In this man's death I hear a cry for merciful consideration—a solemn warning—a protest against the headlong speed with which this generation is trampling respectability under foot. This man's death is a subject of gossip now, when it should be a ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... insult round, and then pretends to feel: Prepare to cast all dignity aside, For know, your talents will be quickly tried; Nor think, from favours past a friend to gain, - 'Tis but by duties we our posts maintain: I read her novels, gossip through the town, And daily go, for idle stories down; I cheapen all she buys, and bear the curse Of honest tradesmen for my niggard purse; And, when for her this meanness I display, She cries, 'I heed not what I throw away;' Of secret bargains I endure the shame, And stake my credit ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... attainments, was often a retailer of stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said, we do need more healthy independence. Looking out upon society, we see how slavish men and women are to fashion and frivolity. Society life is largely a surface life, spoiled by fear of gossip. Young people need to take clearer views of this matter, and to stand by their own convictions at any cost. The question to be settled by most of us is, Shall I steer or drift? Our advice is, by all means have a lofty purpose before you, and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... complacency towards waste and mischief for the sake of moral advantages may be studied in the case also of our womankind. The absorption in their toilettes guards them from many dangers to family sanctity. And from how much cruel gossip is not society saved by the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... hardly have done less, after repeating this somewhat spiteful gossip, than mention the hostile quarter from which it arose. We have considered it right to quote part of it, as the writer is an author of some note: but we venture to think that those readers who have accompanied us so far will believe that Jane was guilty of nothing ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... foolish juror, listening only to one side of the case. Justice often comes too late to secure a verdict. 238:27 People with mental work before them have no time for gossip about false law or testimony. To reconstruct timid justice and place the fact above the 238:30 falsehood, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... marriage to a gentleman in power, Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour; And many little secrets, of the half-official kind, Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... day, as the mere Gabet brought the last barrow of linen, which she spread out on the grass with Angelique, she interrupted her interminable chattering upon the gossip of the neighbourhood to ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... paper, of the trifling affairs of every-day life, adding here and there a sparkling anecdote, a bit of gossip, a delicate characterization, a trenchant criticism, a dash of wit, a touch of feeling, or a profound thought. All this is lighted up by her passionate love of her daughter, and in this light we read the many-sided life of her time for twenty-five ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Tilly had rather wearied of the visit of the two ladies of the city, Madame de Grandmaison and Madame Couillard, who had bored her with all the current gossip of the day. They were rich and fashionable, perfect in etiquette, costume, and most particular in their society; but the rank and position of the noble Lady de Tilly made her friendship most desirable, as it conferred in the eyes of the world a patent of gentility which ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... constitutes beauty complains that the majority of women acquire a dull, vacant expression towards middle life, which makes them positively plain. He attributes it to their neglect of all mental culture, their lives having settled down to a monotonous routine of house-keeping, visiting, gossip, and shopping. Their thoughts become monotonous, too, for, though these things are all good enough in their way, they are powerless to keep up any mental life ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously plain, a quaint old chair or two, and little pictures of favorite saints decorating the spotless white walls. The old ladies kept up a quick, cheerful clatter, as they paused to gossip at the gates of their little domiciles; and with a great deal of artifice, and lurking behind walls, and looking at the church as if I intended to design that, I managed to get a sketch ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hilmer's covert disdain was more impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Some enterprising spirits had started a new weekly local paper, and—mirabile dictu—they actually contemplated a literary page! With a faith in suburban culture, so unprecedented as to be almost sublime, these daring adventurers proposed giving their readers reviews of books, literary gossip, and general information about the doings of eminent writers. They offered the work to me at the modest honorarium of two pounds a week, and were willing to give me a three years' agreement. They were frank enough to acknowledge that their journal was likely to die ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... you'll find a perfect drawing-room, carpeted, canopied, and dark as twilight; its verdant seats broidered with violets and forget-me-nots; and all untenanted it seems, nay, deserted rather, for the music wastes on the lonely air, as if the fairy that kept state there, in gossip mood had stolen down some neighboring aisle, and would be home anon. I would have bartered all the glory of this campaign for leave to stretch myself on its mossy bank, for ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... conceded, in communities differing in all else, in Canada and in Kentucky. We have only to press on. Strange to say, the reform is reversing the ordinary weapons of the sexes, for the women have all the logic, and the men only gossip and slander. But it finds its answering echo in the very hostility it creates. It has a million hearts. Silence every woman on this platform, and the movement still goes on. Elevate woman at any point, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and eloquence—for science is out of the question—were to invoke nothing but a fluid tendency to grow, we should be left with a flat history of phenomena and no means of prediction or even classification. All knowledge would be reduced to gossip, infinitely diffuse, perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings, but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience, no practical competence, and no moral lesson. The world would be a serial novel, to be continued for ever, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... thought of Colonel DeLisle) when as her one-time guardian he might have taken her to Sidi-bel-Abbes himself, and persuaded his old friend, DeLisle, to be lenient. All that Max had heard against the explorer came back to him, and he was ready to believe Stanton the cruel and selfish egoist that gossip sketched ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... were "bought" by the Bank. The histories of the revolution tell us that Benedict Arnold was "bought" by British gold. Did that make him an article of property? When a northern clergyman marries a rich southern widow, country gossip hits off the indecency with this current phrase, "The cotton bags bought him." When Robert Walpole said, "Every man has his price, and whoever will pay it can buy him," and when John Randolph said, while the Missouri question was pending, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis's patient, during which Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. "Well, I must say I am disappointed," she answered. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... from whose urn welled up the ocean and the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and gambolled a squirrel called Busybody, which carried gossip from bough to root and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in which swam the sun and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its celestial stem in Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course had its parasites and rodentia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... pale again suddenly, as she realized that this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry, and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she had met them riding together ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of himself, just as soldiers in the long run acquire courage from routine. The old gentleman, who had come to Paris from Touraine to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it not at all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of honor and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly loved, in whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks without annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily finer for his future benefit, ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... Tibboo is going the round of the town, and becoming the daily gossip. This story has now assumed a substantial historical shape. The facts are, as I have already intimated, that the Tibboo persecuted me to give him a medicine to enable him to trade with profit. I scribbled over a bit of paper, cut in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... the oily smell of the lanterns, the odour of jasmine, frangipanni, vanilla, and human beings sickeningly mingled in the heat, the jangling, out-of-tune music, the wearisome island gossip and chatter, drove him at length out into the night, down a black-shadowed pathway to the sea. The beach lay before him presently, gleaming like silver in the soft blue radiance of the jewelled night. As he stood there, lost in far memories, the mellow, lemon-coloured lights from the commissioner's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... thing to another in importance, and introduce all manner of very subtle detail, to a degree that was before impossible. He can render just as easily the flourish of trumpets before a victorious emperor and the gossip of country market women, the gradual decay of forty years of a man's life and the gesture of a passionate moment. He finds himself equally unable, if he looks at it from one point of view—equally able, if he looks at it from another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arrival, then, Gray began to become very impatient, as that which alone could put an end to a disagreeable species of mystery, which the good company of the borough began now to make the principal subject of their gossip; some blaming Gray for taking foreign landloupers [Footnote: Strollers.] into his house, on the subject of whose morals the most serious doubts might be entertained; others envying the "bonny hand" the doctor was like to make of it, by having disposal of the wealthy ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... supposed, although it did seem strange to me. I made little mention of Jim in my letters to the old home folks. The bad news, I knew, would leak out in time and my chuckle-headedness would be as much a part of the village gossip as the story of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... honest. Perhaps, in their capacity in the home, they are exposed to unusual temptations, but that is just the reason why they should refrain from dishonesty of any kind, even the slightest lie. Gossip about the family life of the people they are serving should also be avoided ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... Vansen. Gossip! Let the duke alone. The old cat looks as though he had swallowed devils, instead of mice, and could not now digest them. Let him alone, I say; he must eat, drink, and sleep, like other men. I am not afraid if we only watch our opportunity, At first he makes ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... due to Ali's chief engineer, Caretto, who next day sent a whole shower of balls and shells into the midst of a group of Frenchmen, whose curiosity had brought them to Tika, where Kursheed was forming a battery. "It is time," said Ali, "that these contemptible gossip-mongers should find listening at doors may become uncomfortable. I have furnished matter enough for them to talk about. Frangistan (Christendom) shall henceforth hear only of my triumph or my fall, which will leave it considerable trouble to pacify." Then, after a moment's silence, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... light than Agatha had ever before received on the manners, characters, and history of the Harper family, the Dugdales, and Anne Valery. But there was in her speech a certain reticence, as though all the common gossip of life was in her clear spirit received, sifted, purified, and then distributed abroad in chosen portions as goodly and pleasant food. She seemed to receive the secrets of every one's life and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Studio gossip and society chatter seemed to pall on young Rembrandt. It is said that when a 'bus-driver has a holiday he always goes and rides with the man who is taking his place; but when Rembrandt had a holiday he went away from the studio, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... thousands; they were to arrest the curiosity—to amuse the impatience—to stir the wonder of a lively and motley crowd. Thus the historian imbibed naturally the spirit of the taleteller. And he was driven to embellish his history with the romantic legend—the awful superstition—the gossip anecdote—which yet characterize the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, in the bazars of the Mussulman, or on the seasands of Sicily. Still it has been rightly said that a judicious reader is not easily led astray by Herodotus in important particulars. His ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Say interest, rather, general. His constant melancholy, the loneliness of his habits,—his daring valor, his brilliant rise in the profession,—your friendship, and the favors of the commander-in-chief,—all tend to make him as much the matter of gossip as of admiration. But where is he, general? I have missed him all ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The Senores de Quinones brought her up with every indulgence like an adopted child. This had been for some time the favourite topic of gossip in Lancia. The cost of her little hats was guessed at with the greatest interest; the number of her toys was commented upon, and calculations were made as to what her marriage dot would be. But such remarks ended by getting stale. It was only ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... stolen a march on the vicar's fair daughter, while she had been discussing this interesting subject with her youthful friend and gossip, the sister of her sailor lover; for the full-orbed moon had already reared her bright face over the swelling waves, and was pouring a flood of radiance through the bay, and illuminating the high-arched windows of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... characteristic of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... was the best authority for the village politics that she could have fallen in with. She knew everything that went on in the parish—not quite accurately perhaps, but accurately enough for purposes of popular information and gossip. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... hears plans for the evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win in a canter. You cannot tell him anything ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... over, the guests made their way out onto the piazza, seating themselves in little groups for an afternoon of chat and gossip. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... myself, and now I'm an old fellow, and growing duller. Turn out your basket of eggs, Aunt Randolph, and let us know what is going on. Where did you come from last—the Mulberrys? Come; there must have been some pretty pickings of gossip there." ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... you should remember your place. It is certainly not becoming for you, a mere boy, and filling a subordinate position, to come to me with gossip concerning ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... blistered herself and others if the Fleet marriage of her eccentric son— whose wife she never saw—had actually come between the wind and her nobility? Was there no finer, more ethereal touch in Elizabeth Gunning's stolen marriage with her Duke than is recorded in Horace Walpole's malicious gossip? Could such beauty have been utterly sordid? What were the fears and hopes of the lovely Maria Walpole as, after long concealment of her marriage, she trembled on the steps of a throne? How did those about her judge of Fanny Burney in the Digby affair? Did she ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Flemish wool trade was at this time a main source of English wealth, so Edward III of England, than whom ordinarily no haughtier aristocrat existed, made friends with the brewer Van Artevelde, and called him "gossip" and visited him at Ghent, and presently Flemings and English were allied in a defiance of France. By asserting a vague ancestral claim to the French throne, Edward eased the consciences of his allies, who had sworn loyalty to France; and King Philip had on his hands a far more serious quarrel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... supervision, its injustices, its mechanical ideals, its one preeminent ambition to teach as many years as it was necessary to obtain a pension. There were the superintendents, the supervisors, the special teachers, the principals—petty officers of a petty tyranny in which too often seethed gossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, the easy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... simplifying the rules under which they acted. Still, taken individually, they were average Englishmen, with rather less than the average opportunities for general intellectual culture; and, like every other small society, given to personal gossip, which was not very interesting to a grave and preoccupied outsider. I find him on one occasion reduced to making remarks upon a certain flirtation, which appears to have occupied the minds of the whole society at Simla; but as the prophecy upon which he ventures ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... clear purposes: Their first purpose is to make certain that this Nation's security is not jeopardized by false servants. Their second purpose is to clear the atmosphere of that unreasoned suspicion that accepts rumor and gossip as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the way; the ragamuffins were driven into the street. Then the fat undertaker appeared with Val and stood on the curb as the coffin, an oak affair with silver handles and plate, was carried to the hearse. Val and the undertaker got into a solitary carriage, and amidst much gabbling and wondering gossip were driven off. It was a plain, very plain, funeral, every one said, and without a note of music. As the crowd dribbled away, Selene recognized two of the prima donnas and the first contralto of the opera, and she nudged Belle in ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in the Lives of the Philosophers by that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes Laertius. The translation in Bohn's ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... years of the Franco-Russian alliance the French archives contain a wealth of documentary material: regular despatches, verbatim reports of conversations between the French ambassadors and the Czar, the news of the day in St. Petersburg and the gossip of society. Savary and Caulaincourt may be said to have kept their master in personal touch with their friend and ally. There is likewise the ordinary regular diplomatic correspondence with Austria, Prussia, Turkey, and the other European states. An interesting and invaluable peculiarity ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... must have been some gossip or canard cited by the writer; for Iyemidzu (grandson of Iyeyasu), who was then shogun, reigned from 1623 to 1651. The death of the "King" (i.e., tono or daimio) of Arima is also related, in more detail, by La Concepcion (Hist. de Philipinas, v, pp. 160, 161); he says ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... know The boon of leaving far behind The world's dull tales of crime and woe, The gossip ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... strumming on the banjo,—the only vestige of tropical life that haunts our busy Northern zone. But he liked just as well to note the ways of well-dressed girls and boys at croquet parties, or to sit at the club window and hear the gossip. He was a jewel of a listener, and was not easily bored even when Philadelphians talked about families, or New Yorkers about bargains, or Bostonians about books. A man who has not one absorbing aim can get a great many miscellaneous ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... any advice, possibly because he feared it might not be safe to have too many guests at his house for the villagers to gossip about. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... gossip, I assure you," was the reply, as the tones sank into a whisper. "I have the best evidence in the world as ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... gold medal he wore, which was picked up by a poor woman passing with a load over the same road, and she went to Cattaro and spent a large portion of the day hunting for the officer who had lost the medal. Sexual immorality was so rare that a single case in Cettinje was the excited gossip of the place for weeks; but to this virtue the influence of the Russian officers during the year of the great war was disastrous. The Russians introduced beggary and prostitution, and the crowd of adventurers from everywhere during the two later years made theft common; but stealing was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... you are dead? You have to go into a world where there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have done your housekeeping, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being Shakespeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... into a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed anything in the shape of a lover hanging around the colonel Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant of the horse-marines or that young Stillwater parson visit the house much? Not that I am pining for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned, you don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to do it myself. Speaking of photographs, couldn't you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite from her album—she must have an album, you know—and ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Probably there was more gossip at the supper-tables of Witton that night than in any other town of ten times the size in the United Kingdom; and it was formally agreed that Poindexter had escaped to the Continent, and would either remain in hiding there, or take passage by the first opportunity to the ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicksome set of fellows when undisturbed, restless, and ever on the move. They seem to take especial delight in chattering away the time, and visiting about, from hole to hole, to gossip and talk over one another's affairs; at least, so their actions would indicate. Old hunters say that when they find a good location for a village, and no water is handy, they dig a well to supply the wants ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is that these two women were the two flags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its allegiance to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... somewhere down the Gut, in Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their husbands. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to seek. The priest, discrowned o' the glory of his age, The widow-bride, mourned as though smitten of God, Gave forth they would with solemn obsequies Bury their dead, and crave no help from man. Now of what chanced betwixt the night of murder And the appointed burial I can give Only the sum of gossip—servants' tales, Neighbors' reports, close confidences leaked From friends and kindred. Night and day, folk said, Rebekah wept, prayed, fasted by the corpse, Three mortal days. Upon the third, her eyes, Sunk in their pits, glimmered with wild, strange fire. She started from her place beside ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... May of 1239, to the great satisfaction of his sisters. The Countess of Kent thought that such news as this really ought to make Margaret cheer up: and she was rather perplexed (which Doucebelle was not by any means) at the discovery that all the gossip on that subject seemed only to increase her sadness. An eclipse of the sun, which occurred on the third of June, alarmed the Countess considerably. Some dreadful news might reasonably be expected after ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... was social intercourse on the steps of the church and at the horse sheds back of it. Particularly did the women gather about Aunt Prudence and Sheila. As for the men, both young and old, the newcomer's city ways and unmistakable beauty gave them much to gossip about. Several of the younger masculine members of Elder Minnett's congregation came almost to blows over the settlement of who should take the fly cloth off Queenie, back her around, and lead her out to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... what is the matter with my poultry," Squire Bartley remarked, after the weather, politics, and harmless phases of local gossip had been discussed; "they are getting as poor as crows. My boys say that they are fed as well as usual. What's more, I've had them throw down for 'em a warm mixture of meal and potatoes before they go to roost, but we don't get an egg. What luck are ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... ... like that," she cried sharply. "Just as though I were your ... property." He saw the roundness of her eyes. She shuddered. "You knew that I was driven to it, to save my name, to stop hideous gossip...." ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... with a daughter of his friend's, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a sister of hers, some years older. "Get you away, miss," said he to this last; "you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with you."—"Nay," answered she, "Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in love with Nancy."—"Take away that girl," said he to her father, whom he now observed to have entered the room; "she has ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... occasion, of the charms of the landscape or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed. Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year since they had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer, many arrears of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on the grass on a sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose arms were quiet in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange of impressions, opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright was surely an excellent friend. He took an ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Their aim was to kill the mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled the word monarch with reprobation. Thus for a long while this glorious image has been lying in the dirty pond! Leaving out the question that it is difficult to restore the monarchy at the present day, let us suppose that by arbitrary method we do ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... went about more or less with the sculptor Drene was a nine days' gossip among circles familiar to them both, and was forgotten—as are all wonders—in ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... neither trickery nor persuasion would avail now and every precious minute counted. He looked again at the beautiful woman who stood beside O-lo-a. He had never before seen her but he well knew from palace gossip that she could be no other than the godlike stranger whom Ko-tan had planned to make ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... minute of that day, and should have liked to sit up all night if I might have kept a candle burning; the night, however, proved a bad time, and left bad effects, preparing me ill for the next day's ordeal of insufferable gossip. Of course this news fell under general discussion. Some little reserve had accompanied the first surprise: that soon wore off; every mouth opened; every tongue wagged; teachers, pupils, the very servants, mouthed the name of "Emanuel." He, whose connection with the school was contemporary ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... housekeeper led her lady through the house, and mightily did she chatter and gossip by the way. The lady listened nearly in silence; for Mrs. Arnold was generous in conversation, and spared her companion all expense of words. At length, however, something she said seemed to rouse her mistress, and she exclaimed with a somewhat bitter laugh, "And so the good people declared ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... herself thus share in the advantages of her industry; and the husband, who does not appear to have much business of his own, gets his share in that he sits among the wealthy and honoured inhabitants of the town, 'in the gates,' the chief place of meeting for business and gossip. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... give them the latest bit of gossip—how many men were off on the herring catch; if any strangers had come through the town in their carrioles on their way to the noted and beautiful Voring Foss and Skjaeggedal Foss (two water-falls of great renown); or who had the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... but momentary. Recovering himself, he laid a large hand on the priest's shoulder, and, his face assuming its wonted smile, said in his usual low tone, "Amigo, it seems that you have a penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, Marcelena, lies! She has long hoped to gain some advantage from me, I have told you— But go ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... evident, and he knew that he could not keep her presence a secret from Eben for any length of time. And then there was Martha. What would she and Flo say when they heard of it? This thought brought the perspiration to his forehead, causing him to shift uneasily. And the neighbours! What a rare bit of gossip it would be when they heard of it. And hear of it they certainly would, and he would be disgraced. It was somewhat late when he at length rolled himself up in his blanket by his son's side. Silence reigned near the cabin, and he fell asleep feeling that he had ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... few serve wine. And round the table will always be found men in foreign uniforms, or some missionary from some great power who comes begging for boats or food. These dinners used to be places of great gossip, and chiefly anti-administration gossip, but the spirit of the people is one of unequaled loyalty. The Republicans are as glad to have Wilson as their President as are the Democrats, I think sometimes a little more glad, because many of the Democrats ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... sweethearts to be associated with an ill-kept vessel. If they read anything at all it was what the newspapers said about shipping, or as a matter of religious devotion they might perchance read an occasional chapter in the Bible, so that their mental energy found a ready outlet in the gossip of things appertaining to their daily life and immediate surroundings, which for the most part were nautical, although I must not overlook the fact that many of the more intelligent of them were connected with religious institutions. These were mostly Dissenters, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What a treasure trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... with which, according to use and custom, the Friday evening course at the Royal Institution was opened, has been the most noteworthy topic of scientific gossip since my last. The subject, 'Lines of Magnetic Force,' is one not easily popularised, otherwise, I should like to give you an abstract of it. One requires to know so much beforehand, to comprehend the value and significance of such a lecture. The learned professor's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... full of roe. Then we set to work at gathering the grapes, with plenty of sweat and shouting, and, as the quotation runs, "A few high-hanging clusters did we leave survivors of the vintage." After the sixth hour we returned home. I did a little work, and poor work at that. Then I had a long gossip with my dear mother sitting on the bed. My conversation was: What do you think my friend Fronto is doing just now? She said: And what do you think of my friend Gratia?'(1) My turn now: And what of our little Gratia,(2) the sparrowkin? After this kind of talk, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... no resemblance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is evidently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the King and Queen except at some public place, and whose anecdotes of their private life rested on no better authority than coffeehouse gossip.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... told it to my parents; and I wrote a letter of kind words to the maid, praying pardon for the pain I had unknowingly caused her; and I feigned long illness, that the marriage might be broken off without gossip; and we made a gift to that family; and the maid was glad. For she was enabled at a later time to marry the young man she loved. My parents never pressed me again to take a wife; and since their death I have ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... be good-looking"—she herself is not sure on the point; she feels that possibly she may be prejudiced; she puts before you merely the current gossip of the neighbourhood; people say she is beautiful; they may be right, they may be wrong: it is not for her to decide—"well-educated, of affectionate disposition, possessed of means, desires to meet gentleman ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... for other reasons. Rather than sit home alone, she may continue to go out in society, which is quite all right, but she must avoid being with any one man more than another and she should remain visibly within the general circle of her group. It always gives gossip a chance to see an engaged girl sitting out dances with any particular man, and slander is never far away if any evidence of ardor creeps into their regard, even if it be merely "manner," and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post |
