"Tittle-tattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... France,—the Pompadour,—and he has come to New France to mend his fortunes. How he planned to do it one may guess from his career at Louisburg; but Quebec offered better field, and it was to Bigot's interest to ply Montcalm and Vaudreuil with such tittle-tattle of enmity as would foment jealousy, keep their attention on each other, and their eyes off his own doings. As he had done at Louisburg, so he now did at Quebec. The King was requisitioned for enormous sums to strengthen ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... is there no tittle-tattle, no scandal, no commenting on one's neighbours, in other civilized nations ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... taken out Lady St. Jerome, who expended on him all the resources of her impassioned tittle-tattle, extracting only grim smiles; and Lady Corisande had fallen to the happy lot of the Duke of Brecon; according to the fine perception of Clare Arundel—and women are very quick in these discoveries—the winning horse. St. Aldegonde had managed ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the banker, contemptuously. "She's hopelessly behind the times. Why, she's a perfect child. She takes no interest in anything beyond the tittle-tattle of the county. We had quite a scene the other day because I gave expression to my opinion that young people should be properly instructed in life by means of explanatory handbooks, instead of being left to gather ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... meeting on the road halt for a chat and part with no more serious word spoken than a hearty invitation to dine; on all sides life is seen flowing in the ordinary current, with nothing worse than a piece of malicious tittle-tattle to disturb the calmness of the surface. Into this setting the author places as monstrous a group of villains as ever walked the earth. Black Will and Shakbag belong to the darkest cesspool of London iniquity. Clarke the Painter has no ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... and suffering loosens the rigidity of the mind. Those of his own household broke away from him, the dearest of his children died, trusted Officers forsook him, some of those whose sins he had forgiven again and again deserted his Flag, and whispered scandal and tittle-tattle into the ears of degraded journalism. He was attacked, vilified, and denounced by the vilest of men in the vilest of manners. Sometimes, sitting alone by himself, blind and powerless, very battleworn and sad, this ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... don't know how you feel about it, but if there's one thing I dislike it's tittle-tattle about my ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... provincial towns in Scotland in those days was simply frittered away in the tittle-tattle of cross and causeway, and the insipid talk of taverns. The most trifling incidents of everyday life were dissected and discussed, and magnified into events of the first importance. Many residents had no trade or profession whatever. Annuitants and retired ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... gladly heard The converse of the world polite, But in the drawing-room all appeared To find in gossip such delight, Speech was so tame and colourless Their slander e'en was weariness; In their sterility of prattle, Questions and news and tittle-tattle, No sense was ever manifest Though by an error and unsought— The languid mind could smile at nought, Heart would not throb albeit in jest— Even amusing fools we miss In thee, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... you a 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 to become the wife of Tom, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... then no help for it, old wives being what they are: authorized by the gentle parson, depending upon the report of a dame of character, the tittle-tattle spread and settled like a mist, defiling Judith to the remotest coves of Twin Islands. And Judith was vanished! I knew then, in the gray noon of that day, why the child had cried in that leafy nook of the Whisper Cove road ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... said Mr. Furnival, after a moment's consideration. He was angry with Lady Mason at the moment for having put him into this position. Why had she told her son that she was to be up in London, thus producing conversation and tittle-tattle which made deceit on his part absolutely necessary? Lady Mason's business in London was of a nature which would not bear much open talking. She herself, in her earnest letter summoning Mr. Furnival up from Birmingham, had besought him that her visit to his chambers might not be made matter ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... For, in the first place, the identification of the personages in the framework of the Heptameron depends upon the merest and, as it seems to me, the idlest conjecture; and, in the second, the interest of the actual tittle-tattle, whether it could be fathered on A or B or not, is the least part of the interest of the book. Indeed, the stories altogether are, as I think, far less interesting ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... wilt not, or thou canst not? Any of these things ought to be easy to thee; they relate much more wondrous miracles of thine." Then turning to the courtiers Herod said, "He does not stir. Ah, I see well that what has made him so notorious was only idle tittle-tattle. He knows nothing ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... 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 could ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... were coming forward into power and influence, they could not have done better. The chronic jealousy and distrust of the time were deepened. And all this was aggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage, whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 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 ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... clear and simple notion, yet it had entered nobody's head till that moment. It was a saying that had extraordinary consequences. All scandal and gossip, all the petty tittle-tattle was thrown into the background, another significance had been detected. A new character was revealed whom all had misjudged; a character, almost ideally severe in his standards. Mortally insulted by a student, that is, an educated ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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, but he ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... 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 ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the fine stories came the little legends—things about Charlotte when she was a governess herself at Mrs. Sidgwick's, and the tittle-tattle of the parish. One of the three curates whom Charlotte made so shockingly immortal avenged himself for his immortality by stating that the trouble with Charlotte was that she would fight for mastery in the parish. Who can believe him? If there is ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... been, I believe; Although the World has such an evil tongue That—but my chaster ear will not receive An echo of a syllable that's wrong:[lo] In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve, As that abominable tittle-tattle, Which is the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... an admiring circle, he betakes himself with infinite zest to the discussion of aesthetic tittle-tattle over a cup of tea and a toasted bun. "Dear fellow," his friends will say of him at such a moment, "he is so etherial; and his eyes, did you observe that far-away, rapt look in them?" They will then take pleasure in persuading one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... of her friend's statements, and in part declined to believe her. But when she found herself alone she felt disquieted by what she had heard. Perhaps she would have treated the matter as mere idle tittle-tattle, if she had not already regretted that she herself had no second child. On the day when the unhappy Morange had lost his only daughter, and had remained stricken down, utterly alone in life, she had experienced a vague feeling of anguish. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... news of the court, merely to be able himself to detail to me the most absurd things that can well be imagined about it. You know that those great newsmongers are the curse of provincial towns, and that they have no greater anxiety than to spread, everywhere abroad all the tittle-tattle they pick up. This one showed me, to begin with, two large sheets of paper full to the very brim with the greatest imaginable amount of rubbish, which, he says, comes from the safest quarters. Then, as if it were a wonderful thing, ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... of the colonel and little Roger. And Lichfield, long before the lettering on Patricia's tombstone had time to lose its first light dusty gray, had accredited Cousin Lucy Fentnor with illimitable willingness to become Mrs. Rudolph Musgrave, upon proper solicitation, although such tittle-tattle is neither here nor there; for at worst, a widowed, childless and impoverished second-cousin, discreetly advanced in her forties, was entitled to keep house for the colonel in his bereavement, as a jointly beneficial arrangement, without provoking scandal's tongue to more than ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... women, even girls, who are of such pure eyes they cannot discern obliquity anywhere. And there are others just as pure—the lily's own heart isn't purer—who, nevertheless—but why waste time or type. In short, Johanna first, and then Barbara, had seen how easily Daphne Jane's tittle-tattle might be serious news to John March; which it certainly was if the dark cloud on his face was a ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... looks of Tyrrell, the Head of our Intelligence. After all, this is Asquith's own affair. I do not for one moment believe Mr. Asquith would employ such agencies and for sure he will turn Murdoch and his wares into the wastepaper basket. I have reassured Tyrrell. Tittle-tattle will effect no lodgment ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... highbrows I delight to chat, Elevating my brows Over this and that. Music tittle-tattle Never fails to thrall. But the picture prattle Is the best ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... avoid writing what is unnecessary is, in these days, no just plea for silence in a biographer, I have some apology to make for having strewed these pages so thinly with the tittle-tattle of anecdote. I am, however, too proud to make this apology to any person but my bookseller, who will be the only real loser by the 'Those readers, who believe that I do not write immediately under his pay, and who may have gathered from what they have ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... 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
... devotion, genius, and courage, has excited that fear from all men which is the highest homage this world can offer to integrity. His personal sorrow, therefore, was not degraded by any foolish additional worry about the tittle-tattle of this, that, or the other personage. Tongues might wag; for himself, he could but do his duty and keep his account straight with God. He hoped that a public law-suit would be avoided. Baron Zeuill was using his influence, so he declared, to arrive at some settlement with Parflete. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... foolish stories about your late squire, and about his dear son, your present squire, and some of these stories probably to the discredit of one or both. Now I have given you the true account of all, so that you can safely put down all slanderers' gossip and tittle-tattle on the subject. And further, I have gone thus particularly into my story, because it will show you what rare jewels there were in your late squire's character, and how brightly those shone out when the black crust of evil habits had fallen away from them. And, lastly, I have ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... those unknown regions, about that "laughing nymph" [Footnote: Heine. SALOON-CHOPIN.] of whom he demanded news: "If she still continued to drape her silvery veil around the flowing locks of her green hair, with a coquetry so enticing?" Familiar with the tittle-tattle and love tales of those distant lands he asked: "If the old marine god, with the long white beard, still pursued this mischievous naiad with his ridiculous love?" Fully informed, too, about all the exquisite fairy scenes to be seen DOWN THERE—DOWN THERE, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... 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
... story is a good one, though it ends unhappily—another cause for complaint on the part of the sentimentalists who prefer molasses to meat. But this is a tale which is also literature. Conrad will never be coerced into offering his readers sugar-coated tittle-tattle. And at a period when the distaff of fiction is too often in the hands of men the voice of the romantic realist and poetic ironist, Joseph Conrad, sounds a dynamic masculine bass amid the shriller choir. He is an aboriginal force. Let us close with the hearty affirmation of Walt Whitman: "Camerado! ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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 his own, all through that fatal bar-sinister—la ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... have a world o' business to do, we must first be seen particular together, to give suspicion, and create Jealousies 'mongst the rest of your Admirers; then it must be whisper'd to the Countess of Intelligence, to carry about Town, or the Tea-Tables will drop for want of Tittle-tattle; and afterwards your Ladyship's absolutely denying it, confirms ev'ry body in the truth of it: As for Cloaths, Equipage and Furniture, they are soon got ready, and if your Ladiship dislikes living i'the City, we'll take ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... (Batchelor thinks) of some petty intrigue in some quarter. This O'Reilly, who has gradually insinuated himself into the King's confidence, and by constantly attending him at Windsor, and bringing him all the gossip and tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood (being on the alert to pick up and retail all he can for the King's amusement), has made himself necessary, and is not now to be shaken off, to the great annoyance of Knighton, who cannot bear him, as well as of all the other people about the King, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... centres of light shed by great minds, where the air is quick with thought, knowledge stands still, taste is corrupted like stagnant water, and passion dwindles, frittered away upon the infinitely small objects which it strives to exalt. Herein lies the secret of the avarice and tittle-tattle that poison provincial life. The contagion of narrow-mindedness and meanness affects the noblest natures; and in such ways as these, men born to be great, and women who would have been charming if they had fallen under the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... these writers 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 ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... love the jolly rattle Of an orde-al by battle, There's an end of tittle-tattle When your enemy is dead. It's an arrant molly-coddle Fears a crack upon his noddle And he's only fit to swaddle In ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... her and the Grand Duke were current all over Florence, and evil gossips at Court affirmed that the liaison had been of long continuance, wherein, too, the Duchess Isabella was herself implicated. Cosimo seems to have been conversant with the tittle-tattle, and, fearing the evil effect it might have for all concerned, determined to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and to keep the scandal ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... soon as I can get out. I'm expected in New York within ten days at the latest. And then, Emma, the wide world! No more little-town tittle-tattle! All I've got to do, in the big world, is to deliver the goods. And I'm going to deliver the ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Manuel and the Queen were the only persons qualified to speak of these matters with authority, and this was Dom Manuel's account of them. For the rest, he was sustained against tittle-tattle by the knowledge that he had performed a charitable deed in England, for the Queen's popularity was enhanced, and all the English, but particularly their King, were delighted, by the fine son which the stork duly brought to Alianora the ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... engendered absolute aversion. In her ambition to keep her mind on the level of Parisian brilliancy, Madame de la Baudraye allowed no vacuous small talk in her presence, no old-fashioned compliments, no pointless remarks; she would never endure the yelping of tittle-tattle, the backstairs slander which forms the staple of talk in the country. She liked to hear of discoveries in science or art, or the latest pieces at the theatres, the newest poems, and by airing the cant words of the day she made ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and distinguished though such circles might be, the youngest member only found out that they were intolerably dull. The wrinkled countesses with their elaborate toilettes and ceremonious manners, the abbes with their fashionable tittle-tattle and their innumerable snuff-boxes, the long dinners, the accomplishment-lessons, notably those in dancing and deportment, were repugnant to the soul of the little hoyden. She made amends to herself by observing these ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "written in Spanish, or to be more accurate, Catalan; and," I added rather maliciously, "I'm afraid you won't get much of a fortune out of Quaritch for it, as there seems to be nothing here except the merest tittle-tattle." ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... for one or another of them will with grinning and laughing thrust her finger through it, and then shew it to the rest, taking also the first opportunity she can lay hold of, when they are a little at liberty, to make a whole tittle-tattle about it, and very much admireth the carelessness and negligence of the Child-bed woman; as if she were a greater wast-all, and worse house-wife than any of them else when to the contrary, if you ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... would do some such fool thing. That Mrs. Hyphen-Bonds was giving a farewell dinner at the Waldorf, prior to her departure to Europe, interested my curiosity not in the least degree. It would be all the same to me if she never came back. None of the wishy-washy tittle-tattle interested me, in fact. There was only one little six-line paragraph that really caught me. On Friday night (that is to say, the night of my adventures in Blankshire), the Hunt Club was to give a charity masquerade dance. This grasped my adventurous ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English notions. And the truth—how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would have her ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... King, "if there is any more tittle-tattle—in the press, I mean—you might let the facts be known; surely they ought to strike the popular imagination; and I'm sure the police need all the support we ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... fashionable world be truly represented, as it is not, in the swarms of so-called fashionable novels, gleaned from the sloppy conversation of footmen's ordinaries, or the retail tittle-tattle of lady's-maids in waiting at the registry-offices, how little is it to the credit of the mass of the reading public that they peruse such stuff; or would it be perused at all, but for that vulgar love, so prevalent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of evidence was peculiar. Knowing that there was no Court of Criminal Appeal, he set the rules of procedure at defiance. Any tittle-tattle was admitted, and postmen and servants were allowed to swear as to the directions on unproduced documents alleged to have been addressed to me. When, several weeks later, I was tried a third time in the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... an imitation also, ingrafted on the system by habit. It had a most unsatisfactory sound, and seemed more like a trick than a real effort of nature. His talk was civil, prosy, and fidgetty: much addicted to small scandal, and that kind of news which passes under the denomination of tittle-tattle, he was sure to tell one half of the town where the other drank tea, and recollected the blancmanges and jellies on a supper-table, or described a new gown, with as much science and unction as if he had been used to make jellies and wear gowns in his own person. Certain professional peculiarities ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... everyone coming from abroad who asked what the news was. For 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... so, for other people's business Wise men and women oft forsake their own, Which may perhaps account for their remissness, A tittle-tattle's never seen alone; And by the time the idle tale has flown From mouth to mouth, the truth in some disguise, A trifling circumstance we find has grown A crime of most unpardonable size, And thunder-struck believers stare ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... keyholes. It catches a whisper from the other side the room, and can understand the scratch of a pen. It has one ear open toward the east and the other toward the west, and hears everything in both directions. All the tittle-tattle of the world pours into those ears like vinegar through a funnel. They are always up and open, and to them a meeting of the sewing society is a jubilee and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... light 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 from this time forward and note what place ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... self-appointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepcion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the pulpit, bar, or stage; If half-bred surgeons, whom men doctors call, And lawyers, who were never bred at all, Those mighty letter'd monsters of the earth, Our pity move, or exercise our mirth; Or if in tittle-tattle, toothpick way, Our rambling thoughts with easy freedom stray,— 110 A gainer still thy friend himself must find, His grief suspended, and improved his mind. Whilst peaceful slumbers bless the homely bed Where virtue, self-approved, reclines her head; Whilst vice beneath imagined ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Caleb wanted, 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 of further information ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... climate. A curt, dry, uninteresting conversation about English horses was succeeded by some queries, which I had answered fifty times before, about English pistols: and then came a sly joke or two about English women. At length the point of the interview began to poke its horns out of this shell of tittle-tattle. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... extent he was cheered up by a letter from the editor of that lively and not too finicky publication, Tittle-Tattle. The interview with Miss Raleigh was acclaimed with almost rapturous delight. It was precisely the sort of thing wanted. Proof had already been sent to Miss Raleigh, who was equally pleased. Would Mr. Banneker kindly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was circumscribed; though very free in her manners, she was very deficient in other respects; and hence it was she so much avoided all society of females who were better informed than herself, courting in preference the lively tittle-tattle of the other sex, who were, in turn, better pleased with the gaieties of youth and beauty than the more substantial logical witticisms of antiquated Court-dowagers. To this may be ascribed her ungovernable ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... an early riser," exclaimed Claude, who had just raised his head. And, turning to his companion, he added: "I once had an aunt living in that house. It's a regular hive of tittle-tattle! Ah, the Mehudins are stirring now, I see. There's a light on the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... bedroom, Helen and Sarah Swetnam had exhausted the Brunt hat, and were spaciously at sea in an enchanted ocean of miscellaneous gossip such as is only possible between two highly-educated women who scorn tittle-tattle. Helen had the back bedroom; partly because the front bedroom was her uncle's, but partly also because the back bedroom was just as large as and much quieter than the other, and because she preferred it. There had been no difficulty about furniture. Even so ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... perturbed me. As his fingers were still limp over mine, signifying unmistakably that there was no willingness to buy, I hastened to withdraw my hand, and, retying my little package, restored it to its place of security. After I had adjusted my waistband, again we spoke some tittle-tattle of the hour before I arose and, with a courteous salaam, took ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... family found open to him a vista of such licence as had been unknown to any since the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the early morning with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel that was not then tabooed by a hard sumptuary standard; to saunter round to Whites for ale and tittle-tattle and the making of wagers; to attend a 'drunken dejeuner' in honour of 'la tres belle Rosaline or the Strappini; to drive some fellow-fool far out into the country in his pretty curricle, 'followed by two well-dressed and well-mounted grooms, of singular ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... better than that. Give me of your wisdom on the subject and I'll write an interview with you for Tittle-Tattle." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... countenance to any remarks or observations respecting it which may find their way into print. I am not ashamed of the Methodists of Cadiz; their conduct in many respects does them honour, nor do I accuse any one of fanaticism amongst our dear and worthy friends; but I cannot answer for the tittle-tattle of Madrid. Far be it from me to reflect upon any one: I am but too well aware of my own multitudinous imperfections and follies. I am going instantly to write to Mr. Rule, and I would also to our other friend did I but know his address. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... I am compelled, perforce, to scribble such jingles as I am ashamed to read, because I must write something. . . ." Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones more animated: "There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead, there will be columns of denunciation and tittle-tattle in every newspaper—quite as if you, a baronet's daughter, had run away with a footman. And you will very often think wistfully of Lord Brudenel's fine house when your only title is—well, Princess of Grub Street, and your realm is a garret. And for a while even to-morrow's breakfast will be ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... stubbornly bent on going down to the garden as soon as ever she heard Madame Deberle's voice there. All Rosalie's tittle-tattle regarding the next-door house she drank in greedily, ever restless and inquisitive concerning its inmates and their doings; and she would even slip out of the bedroom to keep watch from the kitchen window. In the garden, ensconced in a small arm-chair which was brought for her use from the drawing-room ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... to dispose of their old opinions, sentiments, feelings, and so forth, and also of the more interesting facts in their personal history, can obtain good prices for the same at No.— Tittle-tattle street. Inquire at the door ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the extreme sufferings of this internal passion. But as she still kept her love in the recesses of her heart, she died when Lavalliere fell before Metz, as has been elsewhere related by Messire Bourdeilles de Brantome in his tittle-tattle. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... will be found quite A1. Whilst for five o'clock tea, Madame Bouzoum has deservedly gained a reputation as great as that of Rumpelmayer on the Riviera. But again a word of warning! Be discreet as to repeating any local tittle-tattle you may possibly overhear. So much ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... tourists who expected to leave for America and the outside world on the Noa-Noa, overflowed with evidence of their delight. The consuls of the powers met at the Cercle Militaire the governor, and laughed hectically at the absurd balloon of tittle-tattle which had been pricked by the Noa-Noa's facts. There had been absolutely nothing to the rumors but the fears or the antipathies ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... among us to know every kink and crotchet of day-to-day working. If a 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 passes ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... this house, or under the shade of some venerable tree, all ranks occasionally assemble in groups, from sun-rising to sun-set, and pass the time in chit-chat, or in conversation on public affairs. Their subjects are inexhaustible, and their tittle-tattle is carried on with surprising volubility, gaiety, and delight; their time thus occupied is so seducing, that they separate with great reluctance, sometimes passing the entire day in this, pratling, smoaking, and diversion: night, however, terminates these amusements: ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... started directly. If the girl had only repeated some tittle-tattle I should have taken no notice of course, but as it was, I felt bound ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... be reduced to order. All those people had seen one another the day before, and they were all going to see one another the day to follow, yet talk they would and must and did. Engagements, marriages, acceptances, excuses, compliments, tittle-tattle, personalities—a rolling flood of chatter and gossip. Mrs. Pence took her people for what they were, apparently, and kept up with the best of them herself. Now and then her husband would do a little feeble something to quiet the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... future to be thick-skinned, and when Gashmu's tongue is whispering, and whenever some busybody like Sanballat repeats Gashmu's words to us, let us act as Nehemiah did. Let us take no notice of the repeated tittle-tattle. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... for nonsense!—I beg your pardon, sister—but it always provokes me to see a person afraid to do what they think right, because, truly, 'the world will say it is wrong.' What signifies the uneasiness we may suffer from the idle blame or tittle-tattle of the day, compared with the happiness of a young girl's whole life, which is ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... artificial adjuncts of mystery, to all appearance a woman like other women, packing her little sick-baskets, balancing the coal-club accounts, teaching in her Sunday-school, the centre of religion, of charity, and of tittle-tattle, woman in orders fronts calmly the inquirer, a being fearfully and wonderfully English, unknowable ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... assume, but clever. His tyrant, already repenting the pledges given, had been hinting it would be better not to carry them out. Her own relatives were quite as much against the match as Balzac's, she reminded him, while narrating all the malicious tittle-tattle that mutual acquaintances were constantly telling her. She defended him, she said. "A mistake!" retorted Balzac. "When, in your presence, any one attacks me, your best plan is to mock the slanderers by outdoing them. When some one sneeringly remarked to Dumas that his father was a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... separate societies have their own interests and honour to maintain, and quarrel, as the orders do in the Church of Rome. No, that's too grand a comparison; rather, Oxford is like an almshouse for clergymen's widows. Self-importance, jealousy, tittle-tattle are the order of the day. It has always been so in my time. Two great ladies, Mrs. Vice-Chancellor and Mrs. Divinity-Professor, can't agree, and have followings respectively: or Vice-Chancellor himself, being ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... 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 ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... paragraphs; or how two pictures, one representing myself under the title of 'The Prussian Irishman,' and the other Lady Lyndon as 'The Countess of Ephesus,' actually appeared in the Town and Country Magazine, published at London, and containing the fashionable tittle-tattle of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... initial unlikeness, but initial likeness with internal unlikeness; not rhyming, but strongly alliterative, and in every case with a change of the interior vowel from a weak into a strong, generally from i into a or o; as 'shilly-shally', 'mingle-mangle', 'tittle-tattle', 'prittle-prattle', 'riff-raff', 'see-saw', 'slip-slop'. No one who is not quite out of love with the homelier yet more vigorous portions of the language, but will acknowledge the life and strength which there is often in these and in others still current among us. But of the same sort what vast ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... at twenty was wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of placing him in a position where society would serve him up for tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... from his chair he harped them on Till the very last of the host had gone, Then he yawned and solemnly shook his head And, leaving his seat, returned to bed, To sleep, as a good man will Who, braving malice and tittle-tattle, Has checked his natural lust for battle, And sent the rest to the gorse-clad summit, the ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... really see why you should be so severe on him for going his own way. You are yourself doing so without, I fancy, much deference to your parents' opinions, and besides I have heard you many a time rail against the soullessness of the conversation and the gossip and tittle-tattle of society in country towns, meaning in your case in Abchester, and should, therefore, be the last to blame him for revolting ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... only that it is impossible to show one's nose in this hateful town without knocking against some vulgarity, stupidity, tittle-tattle, or some horrible injustice. One can't live ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... secondly because you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and tittle-tattle." ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... cardinal's fool, rubbing his hands together. His master often rewarded him for particularly choice morsels of loose tittle-tattle. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 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 ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle. It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-bearing which had been the cause of Johnson's beating, and from the noise we heard, and from the sight of the bruised men next day, it was patent that half the forecastle had soundly drubbed ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London |
