"Tattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pettinesses, the same caprices, the same quarrels in families and between friends, the same jealousies, the same antipathies: everywhere there are daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, husbands and wives, divorces, ruptures, and ineffectual reconciliations; everywhere eccentricity, anger, preferences, tattling, and tale-bearing. With good eyes it is easy to see town life, the Rue Saint Denis transported to ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were taken verbatim from the "Confession of Faith," which is our Scotch Thirty-Nine Articles. I think it not unlikely that she would go on telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... such base condition, to backbite [Condition, quality.] Anies good name for envie or despite. 720 He stands on tearmes of honourable minde, Ne will be carried with the common winde Of courts inconstant mutabilitie, Ne after everie tattling fable flie; But heares and sees the follies of the rest, 725 And thereof gathers for himselfe the best. He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face, But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace, And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie; But not with kissed hand belowe the knee, 730 As that same ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... If by some power, human or divine, the gossiping tongue could be silenced and the tattling mouth effectually closed, half of the evil of this world would already be stopped, and the other would commence to languish for want of patronage. The lie of gossip is the blackest of them all. The blackest of all ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... was a great privation, For one of her sex—whatever her station - And none the less that the dame had a turn For making all families one concern, And learning whatever there was to learn In the prattling, tattling village of Tringham - As, who wore silk? and who wore gingham? And what the Atkins's shop might bring 'em? How the Smiths contrived to live? and whether The fourteen Murphys all pigged together? The wages per week of the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... I say, you stay on here, deceiving us, spying on us. Going every night to that wicked, cruel, shameful girl and tittle-tattling. Do you suppose that if we'd had ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... so. What a running about from house to house! the village is like a hive of bees swarming. Do you mean to tell me it is not a delight, a joy to you, to have this little bit of iniquity to talk about? I know better. "Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity," but charity is not to be found in that tittle-tattling, excited crowd of talkers. "Charity believeth all things"—will, that is, believe and trust, as long as it is possible, that people are not so bad after all, that the stories told are not true, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... already produced him two fine children, a boy and a girl, of whom the old gentleman is so fond, that he spends much of his time in the nursery, where he declares the tattling of his little grand-daughter, who is above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the finest cry of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... at me because I come out flatfooted like a friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back, the way a whole lot of 'em do. I tell you George, you got a position in the community, and the community expects you to live up to it. And—Better think over joining the Good Citizens' League. See you ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that soft environments, Take hold upon the child and grip him fast. Quezox: And yet if seeds of manhood there inhere 'Twere time for them to sprout and outward shoot. (Earnestly) I like not tattling tongues yet I must voice, A matter which hath cut me to the quick: On yester morn, I in sweet converse joined, With one who wears angelic form divine, When this presuming fop with jeering eye, Made bold to amble, with convenient ear. Till we, forsooth, were ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... prying knave to watch thy master so closely," said Elizabeth, blushing, but not with anger; "and a tattling knave to tell over again his fooleries.—What colour might the braid of hair be ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... urged her having been trusted with the greatest secrets of this nature, that it was her business to conceal everything, and that to discover things of that nature would be her ruin. She asked me if ever I had found her tattling to me of other people's affairs, and how could I suspect her? She told me, to unfold myself to her was telling it to nobody; that she was silent as death; that it must be a very strange case indeed that she could not help me out of; but to conceal it was to deprive myself of all possible help, ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... furiously. And so it came that Mr. Slick did not like the wee widow's wonderful cat. In fact, he said it was a nuisance. And Tilda Tattle, the tiresome-tongued, town tale-bearer, could not abide the cat, because it mewed all the time she was tattling. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... runs no risk; With me you need not fear a public scandal. These court gallants, that women are so fond of, Are boastful of their acts, and vain in speech; They always brag in public of their progress; Soon as a favour's granted, they'll divulge it; Their tattling tongues, if you but trust to them, Will foul the altar where their hearts have worshipped. But men like me are so discreet in love, That you may trust their lasting secrecy. The care we take to guard our own good name May fully guarantee the one we love; So you may find, with hearts like ours sincere, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... the extraordinary sensation produced by the return of Professor Liedenbrock? Thanks to Martha's ineradicable tattling, the news that the Professor had gone to discover a way to the centre of the earth had spread over the whole civilised world. People refused to believe it, and when they saw him they would not believe ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... secret. I have loved Jack Emory ever since I can remember. It is impossible for me to assure myself that I would consider interference in their affairs warrantable if I cared nothing for him. I cannot afford to despise myself for tattling out of petty jealousy. But you are responsible for ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... in foreign parts. Quoth she, "Thy wife hath a man friend who passed every night with her during thine absence." Thereupon the husband went to his wife in a violent rage and bashed her with a bashing severe enough to satisfy any body. The woman, suspecting that one of the slave girls had been tattling to the master, called them together and questioned them upon their oaths, when all swore that they had kept the secret, but that the Parrot had not, adding, "And we heard her with our own ears." Upon this the woman bade one of the girls ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... excellent man that were made just in the mid-way between him and Benedick: the one is too like an image, and says nothing; and the other too like my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling. ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... unkind debate, And topsy-turvy turned our state. In gallantry I sent the ring, The token of a lovesick king: Under fair Mab's auspicious name >From me the trifling present came. You blabb'd the news in Suffolk's ear; The tattling zephyrs brought it here; As Mab was indolently laid Under a poppy's spreading shade. The jealous queen started in rage; She kick'd her crown and beat her page: "Bring me my magic wand," she cries; "Under that primrose there it lies; I'll change the silly, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... butt of Roman gossip: in all rancorous mouths because of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of the loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized with by nobody; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... word for word, With something else besides, that no one said[7]. The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers, Chairs, and whatever furniture there is In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech, And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble Is always going about, playing the child; And should a dumb man enter in that place, The dumb would babble in his own despite. And yet this evil is the least of all That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested In fearful transformation to a willow, A beast, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, with a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... (forsooth!) of meeting, and billing and cooing every day, the two young people, your parents, went on in a fool's paradise, little heeding the world round about them, and all its tattling and meddling. Rinaldo was as brave a warrior as ever slew Turk, but you know he loved dangling in Armida's garden. Pray, my Lady Armida, what did you mean by flinging your spells over me in youth, so that not glory, not fashion, not ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, that, to make each man his penny-worth, draws out into petty parcels what the merchant receives in bullion. He, that comes often, saves two-pence a week in Gazettes, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... stopping my story to remark here, that in this world, it is certain that we have great influence on one another, and that for this influence we are responsible. Had Louis' school-fellows acted more kindly, endeavoring to set before him the fault of tattling, the effect would have been to raise a feeling of gratitude in his mind, which would have been far more effectual in preventing the recurrence of the fault, than the plan of repudiation they had adopted. Had they, even after a day or two's penance, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... with the oddest little clatter Sings his rattling little, prattling little, tattling little tune; Fleet the feet of tiny stars go patter, patter, patter, As they scamper from the heavens at the rising of the moon. Beaming little, gleaming little fireflies go dreaming To the dearest little, queerest little baby lullabies. Creep! Creep! Creep! Time to go to sleep! Baby playing 'possum ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... is anything I hate on earth, It is a ranting, tattling, prattling jade, Who gossips all day long, and fattens on Her neighbors' foibles, and at night lies down To dream some ghostly tale, and rises soon To bawl it through the town ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... many secrets for his young master to think of tattling about something which to him seemed of no consequence whatever, and he walked off, eying his dime, and wishing he could earn ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... want to do him any real harm," growled Shalleg, "but I'm going to put him out of the game, just as I was kept out of it by his tattling tongue. I'm going to make him fail to show up to-morrow, and the next day, too, maybe. That'll put a crimp in his record, and in the Cardinals', too, for he's been doing good work for them. I'll say that about him, ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... are bitterly hated. And too often justly, for many of them are the most despicable tale-bearers and mischief-makers, who will, for the sake of the favor of his master or mistress, frequently betray his fellow-slave, and by tattling, get him severely whipped; and for these acts of perfidy, and sometimes downright falsehood, he is often rewarded by his master, who knows it is for his interest to keep such ones about him; though he is sometimes ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... you act like a gentleman, and not be always making friends with the servants?" retorted the young fellow addressed. "So that's it, is it? The confounded sneak comes tattling ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the only person that could answer their curiosity or give any account of me; and she, a tattling woman and a true gossip, took care to do that with all the art that she was mistress of. She let them know that I was the widow of a person of quality in France, that I was very rich, that I came over hither to look after an estate ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... get." Thus having filled the Eagle's pate With consternation very great, Down creeps she to the Sow below; "The Eagle is your deadly foe, And is determined not to spare Your pigs, when you shall take the air." Here too a terror being spread, By what this tattling gossip said, She slily to her kittens stole, And rested snug within her hole. Sneaking from thence with silent tread By night her family she fed, But look'd out sharply all the day, Affecting terror and dismay. ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... small hopes of Cuthbert's success, he was interested in spite of himself in the proposed plan, and would have been more so had he known how much had been already discovered. But Cuthbert kept much of that to himself, not willing that tattling tongues should spread the rumour. Only to real believers in the hidden treasure did he care to speak of the gipsy's strange words and the visit to the wise woman of Budge Row. Philip, he thought, would ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... infant fair, Pondling of a happy pair, Every morn and every night Their solicitous delight; Sleeping, waking, still at ease, Pleasing, without skill to please; Little gossip, blithe and hale, Tattling many a broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song, Lavish of a heedless tongue. Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandoned to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush; Like the linnet ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... In one particular Teen was entirely and persistently loyal to her friend. She believed that she had kept herself pure, and when doubts had been thrown on that theory by others who believed in her less, she had closed their tattling mouths with language such as they were not accustomed to hear from her usually reticent lips. These gossip-mongers, who flourish in the quarters of the poor and rich alike, speedily learned that it was just as well ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Miss Whichello's justifiable indignation. He grew red, and smiled feebly, and murmured weak apologies; all of which Miss Whichello saw and heard with supreme contempt. Mr Cargrim, by his late tittle-tattling conversation, had fallen in her good opinion; and she was not going to let him off without a sharp rebuke for his unfounded chatter. Cutting short his murmurs, she proceeded to nip in the bud any further reports he or Mrs Pansey might ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... was that strange instinct which makes criminals of every degree feel that no crime is so low but that tattling on it is ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... This tattling gossip knew too well What mischief HUDIBRAS befell. And straight the spiteful tidings bears Of all to th' unkind widow's ears. 80 DEMOCRITUS ne'er laugh'd so loud To see bawds carted through the crowd, Or funerals with stately pomp March slowly on in solemn dump, As ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... hair. Positively there seems no great reason, after all, why he should be so precipitate in his removal to the town! Indeed (he told himself with the smile of his subconscious self at the subterfuge) there was a risk of miscarriage for his mission among tattling aubergistes, lawyers, and merchants. He was positively vexed when he encountered Mungo, and that functionary informed him that, though he was early afoot, the Baron was earlier still, and off to the burgh to arrange for his new lodgings. This precipitancy ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... reticences of good society, and for a moment she resented a catechism so direct and personal; but only for a moment. Before Ducie had done speaking, she had remembered that nothing but true kindness could have prompted the inquiry. Ducie was not a curious, tattling, meddlesome woman; Charlotte had never known her to interfere in any one's affairs. She had few visitors, and she made no calls. Year in and year out, Ducie could always be ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... who was handsome, spirited, and saucy. One of the daughters of the royal pair, wearied with the forms and ceremonies of her state, which, in the most punctilious court in Europe, were especially trying, found means to converse with this well-appearing, quick-witted scamp. A tattling courtier, recalling a faux pas of the last queen, and desiring no more scandals, reported that the princess had been seen to smile on the youngster. No guilt was proven upon him, but handsome pages were ill-chosen company for young ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to lay about the shoulders of tattling minxes and curious urchins," cries, to my dismay, a voice behind us, and so to us—by his voice at least—Captain Night, but in his body no longer the same gay spark that I had seen the night before, or rather that morning early. He was as Black, and Hairy, and Savage-looking ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... cheat this busy, tattling, censuring world! For fame still names our actions, good or bad, As introduc'd by chance, which ofttimes throws Wrong lights on objects; vice she dresses up— In the bright form, and goodliness, of virtue, While virtue languishes, and pines neglected, Rob'd of her lustre—But, ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... him for breaking the promise of secrecy that he probably had given the steward, from whom he must have learned the things at which he had hinted. Also he had established for himself an alibi of a kind, if ever he should be accused of tattling ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... down over her glasses. "Never repeat what you hear me say, love. It's tattling, and tattling is ill-bred. Now, what can I ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... her Thoughts than she wish'd, and a sudden Change of Humour, that made her know something was the matter with her more than usual; she calls to mind Rinaldo's speaking of the Conversation with his Heart, and found hers would be tattling to her, if she would give way to it; and yet the more she strove to avoid it, the more it importun'd her, and in spight of all her Resistance, would tell her, that Rinaldo had a thousand Charms: It tells her, that he loves and adores ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... table, should be a crime (though contrary to no command) not to be expiated but by death! Thus folly, like gunpowder, runs in a train from one generation to another, preserved and conveyed by the perpetual tradition of tattling gossips. ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... This case you may dismiss— Now hearken all assembled here, My whole defence is this: I killed a dog—a thievish wretch— His body may be found, Beneath an apple tree of mine, A few feet under ground, This simple plot I laid in hope To cure my tattling wife; I find, alas! that she must talk, Though talking risk my life. So from her presence then I fled, In spite of all the tears she shed, And since, a wand'ring life I've led, And told the tale ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... sea, before it was too late, or even to California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the tongue of the improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit out on a log, in the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill possessed, and, with the whispering leaves above him tattling uncomprehended sayings brought them by the wind, gather the old men about him, and talk them blind. As he sat there, Mary came walking swiftly by, a basket in her hand. Johnnie came bolt upright, and took off his cap. He looked amazingly young ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... them, too! The mate tattling to the cabin boy, and both peaching on the poor sentry, who is, I dare say, more trusty than either one of you two. Go forward, and stay there until you are bidden back. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... What do you know about your aunt Nannie's babies?" Mrs. MacDougall exclaimed, in amazement. "Who have been tattling to you ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman wailed, "who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an 'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... space of intervening time, and the feats of the mighty Hercules and the hatred of his step-mother had filled the earth. {Returning} victorious from Oechalia, he is preparing a sacrifice which he had vowed to Cenaean Jupiter,[16] when tattling Rumour (who takes pleasure in adding false things to the truth, and from a very little {beginning}, swells to a great bulk by her lies) runs before to thy ears, Deianira, {to the effect} that the son of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... maliciously at me from behind his chair, say to me,—'Simpson, I hear that you make too free with my wine, and are frequently intoxicated; stop it, or I shall dismiss you.' In short, Lagrange was the bane of my existence, and I secretly swore to be terribly revenged upon him for his tattling propensities. You'll soon see how well ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson |
