gossip on Half-Truths

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...

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

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…...

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

Never about, always to.

A monk told his monastic leader, Poeman, “I am troubled in spirit, and I want to leave this place.” The old man said, “Why?” He said, “I have heard unedifying stories about one of the brothers. The...

Much of gossip is envy in disguise.

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

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...

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

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;...

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

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.”

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

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

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

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

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, and know good from evi...

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...

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

Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," not "blessed are the troublemakers."

If someone has done something wrong even at a personal level, the right thing to do is not to gossip about it, not to tell everybody else, not to allow resentment to build up and fester, and certainly...

In the ancient world, a place where the veil between the earthly and spiritual was easily pierced, rumors and gossip about great leaders being born of the gods, especially amongst royals, was somewhat...

Conversation is when three people are talking. Gossip is when one of them leaves.