111 Gossip Quotes

Gossip, that tantalizing thread that weaves through the fabric of human interaction, has fascinated us for centuries. Whether whispered in hushed tones or broadcasted across social media, gossip shapes perceptions, fuels stories, and sometimes alters destinies. In this post, we delve into the captivating world of gossip through a carefully curated collection of the top 111 gossip quotes. These quotes offer a mix of wit, wisdom, and caution, shedding light on the impact and allure of speaking behind closed doors. As you explore these quotes, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how gossip infiltrates our daily lives and the reflections it invites upon our actions and words.

1. “If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.” - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

2. “Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.” - Oscar Wilde

3. “Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip” - Erma Bombeck

4. “Doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you ANYWAY.” - Felder Rushing

5. “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” - Marie Curie

6. “The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.” - Lemony Snicket

7. “Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.” - Diana Wynne Jones

8. “It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers,and schlemiels, whores and night owls ... three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calulations of their next big mistake.” - Michael Chabon

9. “Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.” - Laurence Sterne

10. “Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.” - Robert Ludlum

11. “Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.” - Booth Tarkington

12. “Sometimes I think that wisdoms slip from my mind like drool from the lips of an idiot...Where's all this stuff coming from? Is it any good? Any good in, you know, the wisdom sense? Who am I to spout this stuff anyway?Well, here's the thing. You too can find yourself shedding wisdom like cat hair if you only allow yourself the liberty of introspection.Think about what you alone know that no one else does. That one neat wonderful profound insight. It is fully yours. No one else on this planet of about six billion people understands it like you do.Now, see if you can share it with someone. Bestow it, a gift of yourself.Wisdom is like gossip. Except it's the good kind.” - Vera Nazarian

13. “Isn't it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?” - Sean Covey

14. “Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong.” - L.M. Montgomery

15. “Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth. ” - Will Rogers

16. “the more you stared up crap the more it's going to smell (/)” - Mary Sumner

17. “We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.” - Amy Carmichael

18. “Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.” - Steve Toltz

19. “Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.” - Oscar Wilde

20. “The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.” - Edward R. Murrow

21. “How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.” - Marcus Aurelius

22. “In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

23. “I give boring people something to discuss over corn.” - Aimee Bender

24. “Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.” - Noam Chomsky

25. “But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.” - Gary Snyder

26. “No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.” - Ami McKay

27. “It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.” - Honoré de Balzac

28. “In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.” - Samuel R. Delany

29. “When I write, I am gossiping. Writing to whisper the story, whether good or bad to my listener.” - Sonia Rumzi

30. “This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people—because, surely, Wally was nice—would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer—and harder, if not impossible, to conceal.” - John Irving

31. “Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,Painter or plumber or never-do-well,Do me a favor and shut your face -Poets alone should kiss and tell.” - Dorothy Parker

32. “People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.” - Gregory Maguire

33. “Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.” - Jane Austen

34. “I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.” - Andy Warhol

35. “Latchkey! I mean . . . I want to talk to you . . .' He fell silent, glancing behind him and shifting from foot to foot, his waterproof trousers rattling like the bulls' bladders that boys use to learn swimming. Sterlingov angrily spat out his cigarette. 'Well? What about?' 'A . . . about a secret matter ,' Alyoshka whispered. Dozens of ears floated around them in the dust waves; the whisper was heard, and it ran on like a spark along a gunpowder wick. Alyoshka's secret message, the mysterious special clothing, the deacon's catastrophe-all this was too much. The atmosphere was charged with thousands of volts, and something was needed to discharge the electricity, to clear the air. ("X")” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

36. “It’s not technically gossip if you start your sentence with “I’m really concerned about __________________ ,” (fill in the name of the person you’re not gossiping about).” - Brian P. Cleary

37. “'Shoot the wounded... what we do to people who are the most vulnerable... we 'shoot the wounded.' As if they haven't suffered enough, we add to it by gossiping and treating hurt people like outcasts." ..."I think we killed Ronnie's spirit... Instead of coming alongside her and supporting her through this, I failed her...” - Lynn Dove

38. “Everything about everybody was very soon known by everybody else.” - Jude Morgan

39. “It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard” - Jude Morgan

40. “You cannot believe everything you hear” - Jude Morgan

41. “Uvijek svi znaju za nesreću i zlo, samo dobro ostaje skriveno.” - Meša Selimović

42. “What was really unfair about the whole thing was that Oma Kristel hadn't so much exploded as spontaneously combusted. But Gossip is Baron Münchhausen's little sister, and never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.” - Helen Grant

43. “At school, the news that Pia Kolvenbach was moving to England and that her parents were divorcing had circulated with lightening speed. Suddenly I was no longer ostracized for being the Potentially Exploding Girl, but the new attention was worse. I could tell that the girls who sidled up to me and asked with faux-sympathetic smiles whether it was true were doing it on the basis of discussions they had heard between their own parents, to who they would report back like scouts. Soon there would be nothing left of me at all, nothing real: I would be a walking piece of gossip, alternatively tragic and appalling and, worse of all, a poor thing.” - Helen Grant

44. “I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone.” - Gail Carriger

45. “People like to think the worst. They like to have hushed gossip sessions and point their fingers at someone's problems that are more obvious than their own.” - Marcia Lynn McClure

46. “They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.” - Pandora Poikilos

47. “If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

48. “Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” - Paulo Coelho

49. “Fidelity is a living, breathing entity. On wobbly footing, it can wander, becoming something different entirely.” - Kay Goodstadt

50. “His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.” - William Shakespeare

51. “What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave.” - Criss Jami

52. “I get accused all the time of having a bigmouth. But if you ask me, guys gossip way more than girls do.” - Meg Cabot

53. “The worst thing about talk ... is that there's no way to lay it to rest. Every fresh breeze brings a new speculation.” - Susan Wittig Albert

54. “It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.” - Jane Austen

55. “Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.” - China Miéville

56. “How she wished she had Elizabeth to herself for a little so they could discuss what Henry's real intentions were and also how high and mighty Penelope had acted at lunch and what a tremendous insult it was that she'd come at all and did anyone really think she was beautiful with those oversize features anyway.” - Anna Godbersen

57. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” - Socrates

58. “You said she's a senior? Babe we're ALL crazy.” - Cecily von Ziegesar

59. “It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made --- so faithful is the public.” - Arnold Bennett

60. “If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.” - Julian Fellowes

61. “Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.” - Richard Brinsley Sheridan

62. “Oh! I know what I wanted to tell you – you’ll never guess who Thomas is chasing after now…”Hmmm, never guess or can’t be bothered to guess – it was a hard call. I yawned again, glancing at the bed, which was inviting me to clamber back inside and pull the sheet over my head. So tempting, but not practical.” - Melanie Cusick-Jones

63. “It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.” - Sherwood Smith

64. “A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it.But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target.So does gossip.” - Vera Nazarian

65. “The gossip mill runs on estrogen.” - Kim Harrington

66. “Often people that criticise your life are usually the same people that don't know the price you paid to get where you are today. True friends see the full picture of your soul.” - Shannon Alder

67. “There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.” - Alexandre Dumas

68. “It's only gossip if you repeat it. Until then, it's gathering information.” - Mercedes Lackey

69. “I said I don't want to know," Kailani said firmly, her voice suddenly too loud. Cristina sat back into the bench, her eyes wide and disappointed. Then Ana started waving wildly, her small hand arcing for her mother's undivided attention, and, as Kailani watched in silence, the child slipped safely down the slide."Kailani to Cristina” - Siobhan Fallon

70. “He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.” - Henry Adams

71. “The public talk -- and injuriously! -- Well! are you ignorant of the little importance of such talk? -- The public speak! -- It is not the world, it is only the despicable part of it -- only the ill-natured, who upon the smallest evidence pass rash judgements, and anticipate events, the wise wait for them and are silent.” - Joseph Boruwlaski

72. “I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways!” - Georgette Heyer

73. “For acting thus you will remain innocent among the hissings of the serpents, and like a sweet strawberry you will receive no venom from the contact of venomous tongues.” - St. Francis de Sales

74. “Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,The which in every language I pronounce,Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.” - William Shakespeare

75. “Rumour is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjecturesAnd of so easy and so plain a stopThat the blunt monster with uncounted heads,The still-discordant wavering multitude,Can play upon it.” - William Shakespeare

76. “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” - Shannon L. Alder

77. “Did you ever hear the Oriental proverb, "The dogs bark but the caravan passes on"? Let them bark, Scarlett. I fear nothing will stop your caravan.” - Margaret Mitchell

78. “History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.” - Gore Vidal

79. “Oh! Did you hear that Haley Spencer asked him to homecoming?” she exclaimed. “Of course I didn’t. You’re my source of gossip, remember?” - Rebecca Donovan

80. “Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement” - George Bancroft

81. “Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light.” - Jennie Churchill

82. “What people say and feel about you when you've left a room is precisely your job while you are in it.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

83. “Oh, this time I was doing the gossiping. You should really dismiss me for disloyalty, not to mention the disrespect I'm showing right now by talking to you like this.” - Jayne Bauling

84. “Are you what others say and think you are?  Or are you who you are regardless of what others say and think?” - Richelle E. Goodrich

85. “Often people that say they “don’t care” actually do. The moment they discuss you with their friends and family, compete with you, bad mouth you to others or react to anything you do or say is when they give themselves away. You can either be saddened or flattered that you effected someone so much. The perspective is yours to determine.” - Shannon L. Alder

86. “He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.” - Victor Hugo

87. “Stupidity is to have amnesia over your own faults when the person you hate makes theirs.” - Shannon L. Alder

88. “Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

89. “Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.” - Criss Jami

90. “Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn't that be satisfying?” - Lemony Snicket

91. “Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they’re jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.” - Shannon L. Alder

92. “I guess when you'd lived as long, and pondered as much, as Old Tom had...a game of hopscotch could be more profound than village politics or gossip.” - Linda Medley

93. “Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint:Things least to be believed are most preferred.All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint,Are readily believed if once put down in print” - John Clare

94. “When they're talking about me they're letting someone else rest.” - Debra Webb

95. “After one of the lectures in Philadelphia, a woman asked Chesterton what made women talk so much, to which he replied, briefly, 'God, Madam'.” - Ian Ker

96. “A good word will spread in the grapevine, bringing forth clusters of grapes and the benevolent of wine; a bad word will spread withering the vines, and choke the potential grapes.” - Anthony Liccione

97. “It's none of your concern what others say or think about you. Your happiness is your own responsibility.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

98. “Fill your mind before you empty your mouth.” - Habeeb Akande

99. “„So ist es,“ sagte die Herzogin, „und die Moral davon ist – Mit Liebe und Gesange hält man die Welt im Gange!“„Wer sagte denn,“ flüsterte Alice, „es geschehe dadurch, daß Jeder vor seiner Thüre fege.” - Lewis Carroll

100. “Three kinds of people get talked about: The fascinating, the freaks and the nefarious.” - Donna Lynn Hope

101. “Let them hear your voice so rarely that a simply-uttered word creates a hush of expectancy in the room.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

102. “You're not playing the game," he said grimly. "English gossip isn't supposed to get back to the person it's about.” - Elaine Dundy

103. “Walk away from gossip and verbal defamation. Speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.” - Steve Maraboli

104. “Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.” - Anton Chekhov

105. “People would say bad things about you, because it is the only way their insignificant self can feel better than you.” - Dennis E. Adonis

106. “An idle tongue is the mother of all conflicts.” - Dennis E. Adonis

107. “In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.” - Tahir Shah

108. “A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.” - Criss Jami

109. “Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind.” - Criss Jami

110. “Worse than talking with a mouthful, is gossiping with a mouthful!” - Anthony Liccione

111. “I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.” - Joyce Carol Oates