"Tattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to 30,000 pounds, took no interest in their pupils. Gibbon's tutor read a few Latin plays with his pupil, in a style of dry and literal translation. The other fellows, less conscientious, passed their lives in tippling and tattling, discussing the "Oxford Toasts," and drinking other toasts to the king over the water. "Some duties," says Gibbon, "may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars," but "the velvet cap was the cap of liberty," and the gentleman commoner ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... only person that could answer their curiosity or give any account of me; and she, a tattling woman and a true gossip, took care to do that with all the art that she was mistress of. She let them know that I was the widow of a person of quality in France, that I was very rich, that I came over hither to look after an estate that fell to me by some of my relations who died here, that I ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... he never makes mistakes; it is not his way to go gossiping and tattling; he never tells anything till he's asked, and then it's fit he should. About the sirloin of beef, and all, he was right in the end, I found, to do him justice; and I'm sure he's right now about the lantern—he's ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... him even more than she knew. At the same time he hated to appear to pry into the secrets of his absent friend; to discuss her with their bustling hostess resembled too much for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant about an unconscious employer. He left out of account however Mrs. Bundy's knowledge of the human heart, for it was this fine principle that broke down the barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was not meddling with Mrs. Ryves's affairs ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... love you. Yet, and for ever, would I contribute all I possess to your welfare. On account of a tattling world; for the sake of my—of our child, I would remain by you, Raymond, share your fortunes, partake your counsel. Shall it be thus? We are no longer lovers; nor can I call myself a friend to any; since, lost as I am, I have ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... have Dog-whips to lay about the shoulders of tattling minxes and curious urchins," cries, to my dismay, a voice behind us, and so to us—by his voice at least—Captain Night, but in his body no longer the same gay spark that I had seen the night before, or rather that morning early. He was as Black, and Hairy, and Savage-looking as any—as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... pate With consternation very great, Down creeps she to the Sow below; "The Eagle is your deadly foe, And is determined not to spare Your pigs, when you shall take the air." Here too a terror being spread, By what this tattling gossip said, She slily to her kittens stole, And rested snug within her hole. Sneaking from thence with silent tread By night her family she fed, But look'd out sharply all the day, Affecting terror and dismay. The Eagle lest the tree should fall, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... the cause of my being jilted, you tattling old maid; you have told that I was a good-for-nothing scapegrace, and I'll pay you for it," said Philip, shaking his fist at the house; and walked on again, meditating how to do it, his boots at each successive step ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... This tattling gossip knew too well What mischief HUDIBRAS befell. And straight the spiteful tidings bears Of all to th' unkind widow's ears. 80 DEMOCRITUS ne'er laugh'd so loud To see bawds carted through the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... whose beauteous thought Regard of honour harbours more than ought, Doth loath such base condition, to backbite Anies good name for envie or despite: He stands on tearmes of honourable minde, Ne will be carried with the common winde Of Courts inconstant mutabilitie, Ne after everie tattling fable flie; But heares and sees the follies of the rest, And thereof gathers for himselfe the best. He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face, But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace, And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie; But not with kissed hand belowe the knee, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Anne dearie, and when you come to think of all the trouble in the church those two tattling, deceitful youngsters of the last minister's made, I'm inclined to overlook a good ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... told me without any change of posture, or collection of countenance, that their master was at home, and suffered me to open the inner door without assistance. I found my friend standing, and, as I was tattling with my former freedom, was formally entreated to sit down; but did not stay to be favoured with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... blossom, infant fair, Pondling of a happy pair, Every morn and every night Their solicitous delight; Sleeping, waking, still at ease, Pleasing, without skill to please; Little gossip, blithe and hale, Tattling many a broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song, Lavish of a heedless tongue. Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandoned to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... as if a few stylish dresses and a season or two would make her a belle of the first water. She had that air of indifference to their little looks and whispered comments which is surest to disarm all the critics of a small tattling community. On the other hand, she came to this school to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people, considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had already been here; otherwise I would have shown her to the door, as she richly deserved. I sincerely thank Fraulein N. for the trouble she took in writing down the gossip of this woman. Though an enemy to all tattling and gossip, still this is of importance to us; so I shall write to her, and also give her letter to me to Herr A.S. [Advocate Schoenauer?] I may possibly have let fall some words in her presence in reference to the recent occurrence, and the irregularity ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... a person complained to me that a talented young preacher had taught unsound doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were taken verbatim from the "Confession of Faith," which is our Scotch Thirty-Nine Articles. I think it not unlikely that she would go on telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he had, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... or stay? (I should show them all I can, or they may pry closer than they ought.) Shall I have it out and be done with it? To see Mary at once (to carry bastion after bastion at the charge)—there were the true safety after all! Hurry—hurry's the road to silence now. Let them once get tattling in their parlours, and it's death to me. For I'm in a cruel corner now. I'm down, and I shall get my kicking soon and soon enough. I began it in the lust of life, in a hey-day of mystery and adventure. I felt it great to be a bolder, craftier rogue than the drowsy citizen that called himself my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you two have been mewed in with that old pussy long enough. While you've been tittle-tattling I've been doing,—listen to what ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the lovers needed my assistance more than I could have supposed; for they were absolute novices in any sort of intrigue, which to me seemed as easy and natural as lying. Francis had been detected by some tattling spy in his walks with Clara, and the news had been carried to old Mowbray, who was greatly incensed at his daughter, though little knowing that her crime was greater than admitting an unknown English student to form a personal acquaintance with her. He prohibited ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... just touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... secret thought I stand And grasp a stirrup fortunate— Her foot was in my other hand. Again imagination blazed, The contact of the foot I raised Rekindled in my withered heart The fires of passion and its smart— Away! and cease to ring their praise For ever with thy tattling lyre, The proud ones are not worth the fire Of passion they so often raise. The words and looks of charmers sweet Are oft deceptive—like ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... valet grinning maliciously at me from behind his chair, say to me,—'Simpson, I hear that you make too free with my wine, and are frequently intoxicated; stop it, or I shall dismiss you.' In short, Lagrange was the bane of my existence, and I secretly swore to be terribly revenged upon him for his tattling propensities. You'll soon see how well I ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... distinguish one from the t'other, when the men and the women that gabble so one among another. And oft-times they spin such course threads of bawdery in their talk, that are enough to spoil a whole web of linnen. And who can tell but that their tattling would last a whole night, for there's hardly one of them who hath not at the least a hundred in their Budgets; but because it is high time that either the Dry or Wet-Nurse must go to swathe the child, they begin to break ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... thus two reasons for public interest, the result was one and the same—a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with the Green Shutters been so ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... diameter with a hole in the middle, and was fastened at the edge to a pliable handle. The blistering pain inflicted by this brutal instrument can well be imagined. At another school, whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a peaked block with a tattling stick;" and this expression of colonial severity seems to take on additional force and cruelty in our minds that we do not at all know what a tattling stick was, nor understand what was meant by ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... by some power, human or divine, the gossiping tongue could be silenced and the tattling mouth effectually closed, half of the evil of this world would already be stopped, and the other would commence to languish for want of patronage. The lie of gossip is the blackest of them all. The blackest of all the black horde, the very worst ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... sober companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, that, to make each man his penny-worth, draws out into petty parcels what the merchant receives in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... spend your whole morning for nothing," thought Jo, as she rang the bell half an hour later than usual, and stood, hot, tired, and dispirited, surveying the feast spread before Laurie, accustomed to all sorts of elegance, and Miss Crocker, whose tattling tongue would ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... lived and loved and sinned in its virtuous midst. Even the small gossip about her and the young laird had subsided, condemned by all, including the most thoughtless, as a gross injustice to their favorite son, and consequently dismissed as the unworthy tattling of unworthy, suspicious old women. Life in the busy little sawmill town had again ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... far less easy than it seems An entrance to the great to gain. The honour oft hath cost extremes Of mortal pain. The craft of spies, the tattling art, And looks more gracious than the heart, Are odious there; But still, if one would meet success, Of different parishes the dress He, like the pie, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... of intervening time, and the feats of the mighty Hercules and the hatred of his step-mother had filled the earth. {Returning} victorious from Oechalia, he is preparing a sacrifice which he had vowed to Cenaean Jupiter,[16] when tattling Rumour (who takes pleasure in adding false things to the truth, and from a very little {beginning}, swells to a great bulk by her lies) runs before to thy ears, Deianira, {to the effect} that the son of Amphitryon ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso |
