“No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.”
Sir Bertrand Russell
Cynthia Ozik once said that people who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers. She said that such people are gossips; they are the empty bamboo (according to the Philippine proverb) that makes the most noise. It is people like them that have the ability to inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavour. There is only one good thing that flows forth from people who like to gossip, and that is that they themselves reveal to you where their hearts lie.
I always tell people that whenever they are wronged, they should learn one thing from that, and that is that the wrongdoer has just revealed a true essence of him/herself. Ouida (pseudonym for the English novelist Marie Louise de la Ramée) pointed out that a cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run because that is what people do. When one dog barks at something, says a Chinese proverb, then a hundred bark back at the sound. So is the nature of gossips and gossiping. Bernard Ingham said that blood-sport is brought to its ultimate refinement in gossip columns.
So, this is what is said about gossiping. Think about it and ask yourself: What am I to gain by gossiping? Do you find it uplifting to gossip about others? Does it flatter your ego to highlight someone’s vices? What about your own vices? My plea to you on this day is to heed the advice of a good friend of Izaak Walton who once told him that whatever is everybody's business, is nobody's business. I want to end with another Chinese proverb which says that "I heard" is not as good as "I saw”. We must never forget that it is the mouth that cuts the throat and that it is the silence that defeats the scandal-monger.
At last, the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
W. H. Auden
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