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Evil Speaking: Quotations from Burning Words

Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character, goes forward. They are not pleasant places, One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all, Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity,— JOHN HALL

If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.— RICHARD CECIL,

Slander is a poison which extinguishes charity, both in the slanderer and in the persons who listen to it.— ST. BERNARD

Never throw mud. You may miss your mark; but you must have dirty hands.— JOSEPH PARKER

A doctor might as well stand with his saddle-bags and scatter their contents through the community as a man tell all that he knows about people indiscriminately. Medicine is to be administered carefully. It is the work of skill to properly administer it. It is to be given according to the constitution, temperament, and condition of the patient. And truth, being a medicine, instead of being thrown about heedlessly, and indiscriminately, and with brutal barbarity, is to be administered with care and discretion.— H. W. BEECHER

To persevere in one's duty, and to be silent is the best answer to calumny,— GEORGE WASHINGTON

The man recovered of the bite. The dog it was that died.— GOLDSMITH

We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to despise them.— CATO

And so the blasts of calumny, howl they ever so fiercely over the good man's head, contribute to his juster appreciation and to his wider fame. Preserve only a good conscience toward God, and a loving purpose toward your fellow men, and you need not wince nor tremble, though the pack of the spanielhearted hounds snarl at your heels.— Wm. MORLEY PUNSHON

Is the scrupulous attention I am paying to the government of my tongue at all proportioned to that tremendous truth revealed through St. James, that if I do not bridle my tongue, all my religion is vain?— F. W. FABER