Inspirational Quotes on Gossip

“We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.”

“One of the most difficult defilements of the spirit to deal with is the critical spirit. A critical spirit has its root in pride. Because of the 'plank' of pride in our own eye we are not capable of dealing with the 'speck' of need in someone else. We are often like the Pharisee who, completely unconscious of his own need prayed "God, I thank you that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11). We are quick to see - and to speak of - the faults of others, but slow to see our own needs. How sweetly we relish the opportunity to speak critically of someone else - even when we are unsure of the facts. We forge that "a man who stirs up dissension among brothers" by criticizing one to another is one of the "six thing which the Lord hates" (Proverbs 6:16-19)”

“Curses are like chickens, they always come home to roost.”

“Gossip is passing on information when you are neither part of the problem nor part of the solution.”

“For acting thus you will remain innocent among the hissings of the serpents, and like a sweet strawberry you will receive no venom from the contact of venomous tongues.”

“Tale-bearing emits a threefold poison; for it injures the teller, the hearer, and the person concerning whom the tale is told.”

“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.”

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

“The best way to deal with slander is to pray about it: God will either remove it, or remove the sting from it. Our own attempts at clearing ourselves are usually failures; we are like the boy who wished to remove the blot from his copy, and by his bungling made it ten times worse.”

“I find great numbers of moderately good people who think it fine to talk scandal. They regard it as a sort of evidence of their own goodness.”

“You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the forest will cease when all the timber and the dry wood are consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning.”

“Nothing is a greater, or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.”

“In the use of the tongue God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well cr ill using it we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent at death, yet it is rather the state of death than life.”

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

“It is a sign of a perverse and treacherous disposition to wound the good name of another, when he has no opportunity of defending himself.”

“Slander is worse than cannibalism.”

“The joyless Christian reveals himself by having negative thoughts and talk about others, in a lack of concern for others welfare, and a failure to intercede on others behalf. Joyless believers are self-centered, selfish, proud, and often vengeful and their self-centeredness inevitably manifests itself in prayerlessness.”

“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, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed.”

“There would not be so many open mouths if there were not so many open ears.”

“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.”