You know how gossip is. It’s the toxic waste of small towns.
You can go on blackening people’s reputations for years, and everyone will believe you, more or less, even when it’s perfectly obvious that you’re lying.
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues, but only about their secret vices.
Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip.
In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which gossip leaks from one social set to another.[En province, il existe plus d’une soupape par laquelle les commérages s’échappent d’une société dans l’autre.]
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
Evil tongues have always venom to scatter abroad, and nothing here below can guard against it.[Les langues ont toujours du venin à répandre, Et rien n’est ici-bas qui s’en puisse défendre.]
