relationships and community on Gossip

In 1867, the great American writer Mark Twain embarked on what he wryly called his “Great Pleasure Excursion,” a journey through Europe that would later inspire his travelogue, The Innocents Abroad...

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

Holy and merciful God, we need Your grace and love today. We deliberately lie and speak falsehoods. We mislead and deceive with half-truths. We omit facts that make us look bad. We take pleasure in go...

Father God, we confess that the actions of our hands do not often match the words of our mouths. We say one thing and do another. We give you praise and curse a friend, we sing songs of thanksgiving a...

Lord Jesus, We come to you today convicted of our own sin. When we read your call for the church to be united, we have to admit that we have fallen short. We have gossiped against your body, we have ...

O Lord, We marvel that you would take on flesh and blood in order to be crucified, killed, and buried for us. You humbled yourself and submitted to the hatred of sinful men, accepting the thorns, the ...

Never about, always to.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

If there were no gratified hearers of ill reports, there would be an end of the trade of spreading them.

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.”

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, othe...

To gossip means to betray a confidence or to discuss unfavorable personal facts about another person with someone who is not part of the problem or its solution. Even if the information you discuss is...

Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great deterrent.

What good does it do to speak in tongues on Sunday if you have been using your tongue during the week to curse and gossip?

“Why can’t you just be happy for me and then go home and talk behind my back later like a normal person?”

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

Much of gossip is envy in disguise.

The power of speech is unfathomable. Gossip can never be undone. It is cruel, divisive, and demeaning. It alters the way people see another person forever. It robs the victim of dignity and opportunit...

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

Gossip often veils itself in acceptable conventions such as “Have you heard…” or “Did you know…?” or “They tell me…” or “Keep this to yourself, but…” or “I do not believe it is true, but I heard that…...

Three essential rules when speaking of others are: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

We should have much more peace if we would not busy ourselves with the sayings and doings of others.

God has given us two ears, but one tongue, to show that we should be swift to hear, but slow to speak. God has set a double fence before the tongue, the teeth and the lips, to teach us to be wary that...

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

William Shakespeare’s Othello is able to capture the heart of what it means to experience slander, or to have one “bear false witness’ perhaps better than any other: Who steals my purse steals trash;...

There is a story of a medieval monk who was being unjustly accused of certain offenses. One day he looked out his window and saw a dog biting and tearing on a rug that had been hung out to dry. As he ...

George Augustus Moore was an aristocratic writer, art critic, and dramatist. Influenced by the realist school in France, Moore was particularly influenced by Emile Zola. Ultimately, his writing would ...

Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches.