#slander

What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave. ↗

— Criss Jami

#deceit #defamation #denial #enemy #feelings

I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons. ↗

— John Bright

#commons #every #fact #folly #house

[Women] complain about many clerks who attribute all sorts of faults to them and who compose works about them in rhyme, prose, and verse, criticizing their conduct in a variety of different ways. They then give these works as elementary textbooks to their young pupils at the beginning of their schooling, to provide them with exempla and received wisdom, so that they will remember this teaching when they come of age ... They accuse [women] of many ... serious vice[s] and are very critical of them, finding no excuse for them whatsoever. This is the way clerks behave day and night, composing their verse now in French, now in Latin. And they base their opinions on goodness only knows which books, which are more mendacious than a drunk. Ovid, in a book he wrote called Cures for Love, says many evil things about women, and I think he was wrong to do this. He accuses them of gross immorality, of filthy, vile, and wicked behaviour. (I disagree with him that they have such vices and promise to champion them in the fight against anyone who would like to throw down the gauntlet ...) Thus, clerks have studied this book since their early childhood as their grammar primer and then teach it to others so that no man will undertake to love a woman. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#clichés #double-standards #empowerment #falsehood #gender

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. ↗

— H. L. Mencken

#caused #common #crime #kind #poor

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#double-standards #gender #hypocrisy #immorality #men

Slander is worse than cannibalism. ↗

— John Chrysostom

#slander #than #worse

[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#beliefs #clichés #convictions #dignity #double-standards

Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see. ↗

— Al-Ghazali

#arrogance #cheating #conceit #egoism #gossiping

Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#gossip #libel #public-opinion #reputation #rumor

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#down #dragged #either #individual #lift