Lipton’s Journal/December 29, 1954/71

The gossip is the great adventurer without courage to begin—feeling out the world, measuring its retribution, seeking to discover the ends of his own personality, but doing it in the world’s way, spreading tales about the wildness of others, because essentially what the gossip wishes to discover is how the world reacts to wildness—whether it is indeed as dangerous to go off on the exploration of his own personality as he senses that it is. Much the same may be said of the person who is without caution—it is just that he is a little further along.