"Tittle-tattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both declared that they minded what the bailiff said, and never let a word escape from them about the old man's suspicions; but rumour is a sad spreader of news, and the result of some bit of tittle-tattle turns up in places least expected, ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... now, is for doing individual gossiping, scolding and backbiting on a large scale, and in a way that relieves the individual from responsibility. The old women of the past have been royally revenged for all the sneers and slights put upon their spectacled talks, and tea parties; for back-door tittle-tattle of the meanest, most reckless sort, has been made a business, has become the staple of some journals. That people read such stuff does not seem to me reason enough for printing it. Shall we not have a daily paper some time, that is at once bright, clear, pure, honest and strong; one that works upward, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... box on the ears," she said, laughing, "that would be the worst at once; and I think it would serve you right for listening to such tittle-tattle and letting your head be filled with nonsense. Haven't you sufficient sense to know that you ought not to compel me to speak of such a thing—absurd as it is? I cannot go on denying that I am about ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... aware of all this tittle-tattle, and laughed at it. This did not, however, prevent many of his tenants from seeking his society and paying court to him. They would invite him to dinner, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Many said, when she followed, that she ate herself to death; but I mention the rumour in order to deny it, for I am sure it was grief that killed her. It is a pity some dogs will repeat everything they hear, without considering the mischief such tittle-tattle may occasion—although it has been asserted by many that in this case the false intelligence came from the Cats, who had no great affection for poor Lady Bull. Whatever the cause, she died, and with her the employment of poor Nip and myself. The young Bulls who came into possession of ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... and the matter from pustules, all disguised in sugar of milk to conceal their taste and appearance; the world of letters, in the same way, triturates the most disgusting things to get them swallowed without raising your gorge. There is an incessant manipulation of neighbours' gossip and play-box tittle-tattle, all wrapped up in perfidious good taste to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... what philologists say about philology: it is all mere tittle-tattle—for example, Jahn's[6] "The Meaning and Place of the Study of Antiquity in Germany." There is no feeling for what should be protected and defended: thus speak people who have not even thought of the possibility that any one ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in his study, eagerly expecting a reply, but Cardan took no notice of the attack. Then one day some tale-bearer, moved either by the spirit of tittle-tattle or the love of mischief, brought to Julius Caesar the news that Jerome Cardan had sunk under his tremendous battery of abuse, and was dead. It is but bare charity to assume that Scaliger was touched ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... hear La Cibot's tittle-tattle. Schmucke, Mme. Cibot, and Dr. Poulain meant all humanity to him now, when his sickroom became the universe. If invalid's thoughts, as a rule, never travel beyond in the little space over which his eyes can wander; if their selfishness, in its narrow sphere, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... upon a rainy night, as this is, When rarely and more rare the coaches rattle From street to street, to sip thy fragrant kisses; While from the Strand remote some drunken battle Far-faintly echoes, and the kettle hisses Upon the glowing hob. No tittle-tattle To make a single thought of mine an alien From thee, my coffee-pot, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... interest; and that singular fancy of his for describing complicated legal and commercial undertakings came in too. Nor did he spare, in this wide-ranging book, to bring in other favorite matters of his, the hobereau—or squireen—aristocracy, the tittle-tattle of the country town and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... as cooks pray for plenty of meat, and fishmongers for shoals of fish, so curious people pray for shoals of trouble, and plenty of business, and innovations and changes, that they may have something to hunt after and tittle-tattle about. Well also was it in Charondas, the legislator of the people of Thurii,[619] to forbid any of the citizens but adulterers and curious persons to be ridiculed on the stage. Adultery itself indeed seems to be only the fruit ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... when his presence should surprise friends and enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited, that they should not find time to attack him. We feared more from his friends than from his enemies. The lies, and tittle-tattle sent over to St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable mischief to his cause, and wofully misguided him, and it was from these especially, that the persons engaged in the present venture were anxious to defend ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rallied. "I was saying that this War didn't surprise me. The wonder to me is, the Almighty's wrath hasn't descended on this nation long before. He must be more patient than you or me, Charity Oliver; or else more blind, which isn't to be supposed. Take Polpier, now. The tittle-tattle that goes about, as you've just been admitting; and the drinking habits amongst the men— I saw Zeb Mennear come out his doorway, not fifteen minutes since, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve; and him just about to board the brake and go off ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... sort of person. After her fashion she was kind to Ermie, but it never entered into her head to flatter her. She was a gossiping sort of body, and she wanted the child to recount to her all the tittle-tattle she knew about Glendower. Ermengarde had neither the power nor the inclination to describe the goings on at Glendower graphically. The stout lady soon got tired of her short answers, and began to survey her from head to foot in a critical and not ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... popular mind not being quite ripe for such proceedings as took place twelve years afterwards. She still continued to brave public sentiment, lived on in the same free and easy style, paying no regard to the scowls of the sanctimonious or the foolish tittle-tattle of the superstitious. She kept her house of entertainment, shovel-board, and other appurtenances. Sometimes, however, she resented the calumnies circulated about her being a witch, in a manner that made it to be felt that it was best to let her alone. A man called one day at the house of Samuel Shattuck, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... joint starts "blowing" ever so little away up in some obscure corner of our kingdom, we know of it within an hour or two. One would think we were a mothers' meeting discussing our babies, to hear the grave tittle-tattle concerning the inevitable weakness of babies and engines which ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... but one of the exiles from Athens," volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... assistant's servants,' I read in one case, and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither more nor less than excommunication, 'on account of the discordant and quarrelsome state of the families. The cause, when inquired into, proves to be tittle-tattle on both sides.' The tender comes round; the foremen and artificers go from station to station; the gossip flies through the whole system of the service, and the stories, disfigured and exaggerated, return to their own birthplace with the returning tender. The ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always kept together in one corner of the playground, told tittle-tattle and ate their lunch, but the boys ran all over the place like swallows in aimless flight. A big boy was standing crouching close to the gymnastic apparatus, with his arm hiding his face, and munching. They whirled about him excitedly, now one and now another making the circle narrower ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "it was said and he said;" a popular phrase for chit chat, tittle-tattle, prattle and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... seen this opera of Fidelio many a time before; but she was always intently interested in music; and she had more than once expressed in Brand's hearing her opinion of the conduct of the ladies and gentlemen who make an opera, or a concert, or a play a mere adjunct to their own foolish laughter and tittle-tattle. She recognized the serious aims of a great artist; she listened with deep attention and respect; she could talk idly elsewhere and at other times. And so there was scarcely a word said—except of involuntary admiration—as the opera proceeded. But in the scene ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and mankind. It is evident that Adolph, seeing the irresistible bent of the Wagners towards the theatre, and fearing that Richard might in time learn to be content with a life of ignorant theatre tittle-tattle, did his best to save him, not so much by warning him against the theatre—which he certainly knew to be useless—as by showing how many great and interesting things the world holds. The preaching did not fall on deaf ears; and Richard always declared ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and he kept her going by his evident interest. After she tired of providing more realistic details of the night's uproar, Caleb deliberately tapped another vintage of tittle-tattle in hope ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a gossip, no one knew better than himself, and he has incurred the censure of Sir George Trevelyan for repeating tittle-tattle, as he calls it, about Fox and his gambling. But posterity desires to see the real Fox, not an ideal statesman—to see a man as he lived, not only a political figure. Looking back for more than a century we may very well appreciate to the full Fox's great qualities and ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... and described Byron under the worst colors. Switzerland was at that time overrun by the English, whom the recently-signed Peace had attracted to the Continent. The laureate took the lead of those who tried to make the good but bigoted people of Geneva believe in all the tittle-tattle against Byron which was passed about in London, and actually attempted to make a scandal of his very presence in their town. When he passed in the streets they stopped to stare at him insolently, putting up their glasses to their eyes. They followed him in his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... occur, one in the frank intimacy of family correspondence, the other in the official reports of a diplomatic representative to his chief. They are both unquestionably disinterested, and are very much more valuable than the later tittle-tattle of Peter Martyr and Ramusio, which has plainly filtered through what Mr Beazley ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Convent. No place is less fit for you. You have a high spirit, and high religious sentiments: both would be mortified and shocked in a nunnery. Think you that convent-walls can shut out temptation? I know them better than you: they are strongholds of vanity, folly, tittle-tattle, and all the meanest vices of your sex. Nay, I forbid you to think of it: show me now your faith ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... 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, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... hours eating and drinking in company and he lay the night with her. The Wali feigned not to believe a word of this story, but he summoned the watchmen of the quarter one night and questioned them of this tittle-tattle. Quoth one of them, "As for me, O my lord, I saw none save a Jew[FN45] enter the street in question one night; but I have not made certain to whom he went in;" and quoth the Chief, "Keep thine eye on him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... debates of the senate are discoverable. There doubtless was a time when, society being greatly divided, and little communication subsisting among the nobles, secrets were invariably kept; but since the establishment of casinos, which the ladies rule, where chit-chat and tittle-tattle are for ever going forwards, who can preserve a rigorous taciturnity upon any subject in the universe? It was one o'clock before all the company were assembled, and I left them at three, still dreaming over their coffee and card-tables. Trieze is their favourite game: ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... much surprised. But the little clique of his enemies made this an additional subject of annoyance, and there were not wanting those who had the amazing bad taste to repeat to him some of their speeches. There are some who seem to think that a man must rather enjoy hearing all the low tittle-tattle of envious backbiters. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... anonymous. Nor could there have been any more unfortunate choice of a subject for popular treatment than that to which we owe the memoir that now lies before us. A pillar of fire to the few who knew him, and of cloud to the many who knew him not, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip and tittle-tattle of a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchants for his soul, nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle to gape at. Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in his nature something of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hated notoriety, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... people there, and they all appeared to know about him, and all that concerned or belonged to him. It was the old London world over again, in little! the same tittle-tattle about well-known people, and nothing else—as if nothing else existed; a genial, easy-going, good-natured world, that he had so often found charming for a time, but in which he was never quite happy and had no proper place of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier |
