A Quote by J. G. Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility.

J. G. Holland

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Always Confession Either Gossip Imbecility Malice Personal

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J. G. Holland
American - Novelist
July 24, 1819 - October 12, 1881

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.

J. G. Holland

Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin, all hope consists in confession; in confession there is a chance for mercy.

Isidore of Seville

But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown-a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

Pablo Picasso

The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

Bertrand Russell

John's baptism...was a radical act of individual commitment to belong to the true people of God, based on personal confession and repentance... This is one of the main reasons that I do not believe in baptizing infants, who cannot make this personal commitment or confession or repentance. John's baptism was an assault on the very assumptions that give rise to much infant baptism.

John Piper

Gossip is a kind of misalignment with people around you. You can either gossip about everyone, or you can become one with everyone.

Jaggi Vasudev

My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Oscar Wilde

People love gossip because it's slightly removed from actuality. It's a very literary thing... You can hear a great story, and it turns out that it's largely not true. Fiction writing is like gossip. It's not malicious gossip, but it's gossip.

Lorrie Moore

The price that has to be paid for finding truly personal life is a very high one. It is a price in terms of the acceptance of responsibility. And the awareness of responsibility inevitably leads either to despair or to confession and grace.

Paul Tournier

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

Phillip Lopate

Look out sinners because if you do not go to confession, confession will come to you. The Catholic Church in northern England has launched a mobile confession unit called the Mercy Bus.

Peter Sagal

I'm on a strict gossip diet. No gossip websites, no gossip magazines. Otherwise, I find it paralyzing to exist.

Julie Bowen

Gossip is called gossip because it's not always the truth.

Justin Timberlake

Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.

Georg Simmel

You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand.

Criss Jami

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Quote by J. G. Holland

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