It takes your enemy and your friend, working together,to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
- Following the Equator

He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
- Letters from the Sandwich Islands, 1938 ed.

It is human nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts children to say "smart" things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways "show off" when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to be the first to tell a startling bit of news.
- The Innocents Abroad