“Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.”
Attributed
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Walter Winchell4
American gossip journalist 1897–1972Related quotes
Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet
Source: The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958), I
“The practice of "reviewing"… in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.”
Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic
Criticism (1893).
“History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer
Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s
Context: Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
“A painter can leave you with nothing left to say. A writer leaves you with everything to say.”
Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist
'Georg Christoph Lichtenberg', p. 405
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer
Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s
“There is no time to leave important words unsaid.”
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.”
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of American Statesmen (1898), p. 370 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435065322687?urlappend=%3Bseq=458: "If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing—court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie." Other versions of the saying were repeated in several of Hubbard's later writings.
