Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal... bonds--we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage ... he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an... uncommon flavor, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humor or affection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of... a primary need.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gossip, then, is content, a message about people; rumor is a process. It takes a bit of gossip and reshapes it, modifies it in som...e way, and passes it along from individual to individual in different ways.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Good gossip is just what's going on. Bad gossip is stuff that is salacious, mean and bitchy--the kind most people really enjoy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alas, we are the victims of advertisement. Those who taste the joys and sorrows of fame when they have passed forty, know how to l...ook after themselves. They know what is concealed beneath the flowers, and what the gossip, the calumnies, and the praise are worth. But as for those who win fame when they are twenty, they know nothing, and are caught up in the whirlpool.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The monster of advertisement ... is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and be...hind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »