To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.

There is a clear line between being unwise and being disloyal. Telling your own secret may cost you, but the cost lands where the choice was made. Telling somebody else’s spends something that was never yours, and it usually buys very little: a moment of being interesting, a sense of being trusted by the room. The person who told you was making a bet on your character.

When a confidence is on the tip of your tongue, notice what you are about to get for it. If the answer is a small social return, that is the whole price of someone’s trust. Let the silence be boring.