"Exaggeration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And now the whole spectacular business was capped by a sensation so dramatic as to strain credulity to its limit. She could not believe it; yet here it was glaring at her from the first page. Still—it might be an exaggeration, a mistake. She must go back to the beginning and read ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... the unjust effect of my original exaggeration of their length and breadth. The troops that I saw marching through the streets where we first lodged were fine, large men. I myself saw no choice in the different bodies, but the little housemaid much preferred the grenadier ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh Courier was but one of many black papers and journals that developed a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that it was "no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights during World War II."[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied the opposition to segregation ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... "that is the best of having a literary training. Well, perhaps it is an exaggeration to say I am the fool of the family. It's enough to say I am the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... woman; then one alone, a workman' (we abridge the account). 'From Rue Montmartre to Rue du Sentier one literally walked in blood; at certain spots, it covered the sidewalk some inches deep, and, without exaggeration, one was obliged to use the greatest caution not to step into it. I counted there thirty-three corpses. The sight was too much for me: I felt great tears rolling down my cheeks. I asked leave to cross the road, in order to enter my own house, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... exactly as it is given to moderns to copy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a difference there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently done over the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give himself my very twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that playful deviation in my lines which in ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... Europe'!" said Christian, in gibing exaggeration. "Larry, you've got awfully English!" Larry rolled over and came into play again, sitting bolt upright; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited cunning;" and would retire from all competition with what she so disdains and abhors,—even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... battle, however, which I am after going to describe: that in which we and the O'Hallaghans had contrived, one way or other, to have the parish divided—one-half for them, and the other for us; and, upon my credibility, it is no exaggeration to declare that the whole parish, though ten miles by six, assembled itself in the town of Knockimdowny, upon this interesting occasion. In thruth, Ireland ought to be a land of mathemathitians; for I am sure her population is well trained, at all events, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... height, the number of columns, altars, statues, and pictures,—in short, the mirabilia of S. Peter's,—have been greatly exaggerated. There is no necessity of exaggeration when the truth is in itself so astonishing. Readers fond of statistics may consult the works of Briccolani and Visconti.[86] The basilica is approached by a square 1256 feet in diameter. The nave is six hundred ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... This may seem exaggeration to you, especially when I say that her errand was simply one of business, she having heard I was handy with my needle; but if you could have seen her as she appeared that day, marked the look with which she approached ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... police are confronted with a new mystery, which has features so remarkable, that it would not be an exaggeration to describe this crime as the Murder Mystery of the Century. A well-known figure in London Society, Mr. Thornton Lyne, head of an important commercial organisation, a poet of no mean quality, and a millionaire renowned for his philanthropic activities, was found dead in Hyde Park ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... "That seems to me exaggeration. These creatures are only balaeaopterons, provided with dorsal fins; and, like the cachalots, are generally much smaller than ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... individuality, the Southern passion and fire, and the exceptional gifts of temperament which made Paganini's idiosyncrasies of style as a player consummate beauties, where imitations of these effects on the part of others would be gross exaggeration. Spohr developed the school of Viotti and Rode, and in his attachment to that school could see no artistic beauty in any deviation. Paganini's peculiar method of treating the violin has never been regarded ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... not an exaggeration to say that probably there are not a dozen musicians in Europe who have formed any precise and final opinion as to where Brahms should be placed. One gets to know him very slowly. His appearance and manner ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... they had suffered under his rule. The evidence against Mouat was certainly given with such freedom, I might say with such an earnestness of hatred, as was not displayed towards any merchant or tacksman who is still in the country. After making allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the state of Coningsburgh during the seventeen years of his rule must have been very distressing. Every tenant on the ground was bound to sell to him not only his fish, but all the saleable ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... talked of bringing it before Parliament, and I dare say would have done it, only they hadn't time to come to me, and I hadn't power to go to them, and they got tired of my long letters, and dropped the business. And this is God's truth, without one word of suppression or exaggeration, as fifty people, both in this place and out of it, very ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to her person in a manner that it would seem none but a French assistant can accomplish, setting off her falling shoulders, finely moulded bust, and slender-rounded waist, in a way to present a modest outline of their perfection. The dress had that polished medium between fashion and its exaggeration, that always denotes a high association, and perhaps a cultivated mind—certainly a cultivated taste—offending neither usage on the one hand, nor self-respect and a chaste appreciation of beauty on the other. Indeed Eve was ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the room. In those long hours, too, she had time to revert to the doings of the past day—to remember both Maurice's words and her mother's, and to separate, to some degree, the truth from all exaggeration. Her mind seemed to go back also, with singular clearness, to the time of Percy's coming to Cacouna, and even earlier. She began to comprehend the significance of trifles, which had seemed insignificant at the time, and to believe in the truth ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... therefore bear no fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... profits have been, to the entire body of people who have invested money in the telephone, will always be more or less of a guess. The general belief that immense fortunes were made by the lucky holders of Bell stock, is an exaggeration that has been kept alive by the promoters of wildcat companies. No such fortunes were made. "I do not believe," says Theodore Vail, "that any one man ever made a clear million out of the telephone." There ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... refuse that, sir." And therewith Mr. Ray was remanded to his quarters. Verily there was some reason for Blake's outburst when he came in after hearing Warner's brief description of the official interview which Mrs. Whaling had given in lurid exaggeration to the garrison. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... popular power. I know that the arena in which it stands is trodden into mire by the feet of reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command—vile ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... opinion, and left to it not only the control, but the initiative of government. Patience in waiting for a wind, alacrity in catching it, the dread of exerting unnecessary influence, characterise the early presidents. Some of the French politicians shared this view, though with less exaggeration than Washington. They wished to decentralise the government, and to obtain, for good or evil, the genuine expression of popular sentiment. Necker himself, and Buzot, the most thoughtful of the Girondins, dreamed of federalising ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... perhaps, tell something of the forgotten days of the past, the days of two years ago, before the present population of Ellisville came West. There was, perhaps, a graveyard, but the headstones had been so few that one could tell but little of it now. Much of this, no doubt, was exaggeration, this talk of a graveyard, of a doubled street, of murders, of the legal killings which served as arrests, of the lynchings which once passed as justice. There was a crude story of the first court ever held in Ellisville, but of course it was mere ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Socialism denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and productive of antisocialistic feelings of class hatred. Upon all hands the doctrine is condemned as an un-American appeal to passion and a wicked exaggeration of social conditions. When President Roosevelt attacks the preachers of the doctrine, and wrathfully condemns class-consciousness as "a foul thing," he doubtless expresses the views of a majority of American citizens. The insistence of Socialists ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... the verse of a poet, even of this boy Propertius, will outlast the toil of my nights. You and Virgil often tell me that you owe your fortunes to me,—your lives, you sometimes say with generous exaggeration. But I tell you that the day is coming when I shall owe my life to you, when, save for you, I shall be a mere name in the rotting archives of a forgotten state. Why, then, do you delay to fulfill ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... how very little exaggeration there was in these calculations, although at that time they appeared most wonderful. It is interesting to read of the growth of this industry, and the impression produced by it, in its earlier stages, upon ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... something would occur to release me: it could not be that I should have to go. With the exaggeration of youth, it seemed to me an impossibility that I could endure anything so grievous. How I hated all the careless, thoughtless, happy household! Only Richard, enemy as he was to my happiness, seemed ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... were all well armed. I had engaged the services of Mr. Bissonette as interpreter, and had taken, in the circumstances, every possible means to ensure our safety. In the rumors we had heard, I believed there was much exaggeration; that they were men accustomed to this kind of life and to the country; and that these were the dangers of every-day occurrence, and to be expected in the ordinary course of their service. They had heard of the unsettled condition of the country before leaving ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... Holy See in conflict with Spain ... Such a measure would be, in the eyes of the Filipinos and of the entire Catholic world, the explicit confirmation of all the accusations brought against the said religious by their enemies, accusations of which ... the evident exaggeration cannot be disputed. If the American Government, respecting, as it does, individual rights, does not dare to interdict the Philippine soil to the Spanish religious ... how could the Pope do it? The Holy See, in ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to take the baronet's evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... in straitened circumstances at Paris, until Oxenstierna appointed him Swedish ambassador at the French court. This post he held for eleven years. Of his extraordinary ability, and of the variety and range of his knowledge, it is not possible to speak without seeming exaggeration. Grotius was in his own time styled "the wonder of the world"; he certainly stands intellectually as one of the very foremost men the Dutch race has produced. Scholar, jurist, theologian, philosopher, historian, poet, diplomatist, letter-writer, he excelled in almost ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... dropping down into sight, and so perpendicularly to the very surface of the river or of the eyot. One of these flocks dropped from the invisible regions to the lawn on the river bank on which I stood. Without exaggeration I may say that I saw them fall from the sky, for I was looking upwards, and saw them when first visible as descending specks. The plunge was perpendicular till within ten yards of the ground. Soon the high-flying crowds of birds drew down, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... with love, in treating woman as a mechanical puppet, in touching one inward spring, and then another, to force out, at will, her anger or her pity. Whatever she may do, there is no deviation from the most insulting politeness; the very exaggeration of false respect which is lavished on her is a mockery by which indifference for her is fully manifested.—But they go still further, and in souls naturally unfeeling, gallantry turns into wickedness. Through ennui and the demand for excitement, through vanity, and as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pleasing look" and love for her is considered to be the inspiration of nobility in the lover. But these ideas are not carried to the extravagant lengths to which later poets pushed them; William's sensual leanings are enough to counterbalance any tendency to such exaggeration. The conventional opening of a love poem by a description of spring is also in evidence; in short, the commonplaces, the technical language and formulae of later Provencal lyrics were in existence during the age of this ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... of the Old Covenant the personality of the Prophet was under God the dominant factor, and one has even said that "his predecessors were the originators of great truths, which he transmuted into spiritual life."(1) To avoid exaggeration here, we must keep in mind how large a part personality played in their teaching also, and from how deep in their lives their messages sprang. Even Amos was no mere voice crying in the wilderness. The discipline of the desert, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... such as the apparently inexhaustible resources of a newly opened country, the consciousness of youthful energy, the feeling that any very radical mistake in pitching camp to-day can easily be rectified when we pitch camp to-morrow. The habit of exaggeration which was so particularly annoying to English visitors in the middle of the last century—annoying even to Charles Dickens, who was himself something of an expert in exuberance—is a physical and moral no less than a mental quality. That monstrous braggadocio ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... had dreamed of traveling by the great, the unique, the world-renowned New York-Chicago train; indeed, it would not be a gross exaggeration to say that I came to America in order to take that train; and at length time brought my dream true. I boarded the thing in New York, this especial product of the twentieth century, and yet another thrilling moment in my ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... with its undoubted docility and aptitude for comprehending signs, have led to exaggerated ideas of its intelligence, which probably does not exceed that of the horse, and is far inferior to that of the dog. But from time immemorial it has been surrounded by a halo of romance and exaggeration. Mr. Sanderson says, however, that the natives of India never speak of it as an intelligent animal, "and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom, as do the fox, the crow, and the monkey;" but he overlooks the fact ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... bodies have been covered by later lava flows. The ore-bearing districts are merely islands exposed by erosion in a vast sea of lava and surface sediments. Beyond reasonable doubt many more deposits are so covered than are exposed, and it is no exaggeration to say that by far the greater part of the mineral wealth of the earth may never be found. Where a mineral-bearing horizon is exposed by erosion at the surface, underground operations may follow this horizon ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... concerning Percival's popularity on board ship, details which he knew would be precious to the ears of his family by-and-bye. Mason was an honest fellow, and did not exaggerate, even when he saw that exaggeration would be welcome: but Percival had made himself remarked, as he generally did wherever he went, by his ready tongue and flow of animal spirits. Mason had many stories to tell of Mr. Heron's exploits, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... seeking to rouse the passions of men, habitually rely on exaggeration and misrepresentation. They do not tire of painting the present state of society in the darkest colours and of describing with an unbounded but hardly justifiable optimism and enthusiasm the advantages which will accrue to society when Socialism has come ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the other hand it is alleged, that "none of the numerous stories of this dreadful accident which have obtained credence from time to time seem to be authentic" (American Cyclopedia, art. "Burial"). Allowing a wide margin for exaggeration and credulity, there is certainly a residuum of fact. A correspondent of the (London) Spectator a few years since testified to a distressing case in his ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... next it becomes an object by science and by instruments to distinguish more readily and more certainly between the cases where the distance has degraded the size, and the cases where the size being really less, has caused an exaggeration of the distance: or again, where the size being really less, yet co-operating with a distance really greater, may degrade the estimate, (though travelling in a right direction,) below the truth; or again where the size being really ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... character of Christ was an essential element in her every-day life. She had cares, difficulties, and trials, but she cast them all upon the great burden-bearer, hence prevailing prayer was ever her chief delight. It is no misplaced and extravagant exaggeration to say that she breathed the very atmosphere of prayer. This is the wisest resource at all times. Like Elijah on the summit of Mount Carmel, where all is peaceful and solitary, alone with God, she made her ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... note how it dealt with the humour of excessive wealth; and note how it dealt with the humour of schools and of Dons. One might almost define it by negations. There is in all of it no—but here I lack a word.... When things ring false it is because they have got by exaggeration or by some other form of falsity beside themselves. Appreciation of rank or even of worth becomes snobbishness; appreciation of another's judgment false taste; and patriotism, the most beautiful, the noblest, the most necessary ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... of his eye he saw Marigny's helper looking at him. Without undue exaggeration, he craned his neck, rounded his shoulders, and carried himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly idler. He reflected, too, that a bare-headed man in evening dress would not readily be identified with a leather-coated chauffeur, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... attempted to uphold the existence of any psychic force should at the same time offer an experimental test of its actuality. But he was here faced with an experience transcendental and subjective, of which he could give no account that would not sound like some imaginative exaggeration. He was not even sure that Maud felt it, or rather he suspected that the experience of wedded love was to her the heightening and emphasizing of something which ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stood talking to a little feller as looked as like a rag and bone man as anythink; but when you was required to stop the kerridge and pick up every tramp as you overtook on the road, it was coming it a little too strong." This last was a slight exaggeration on the part of Bounder. The exact truth was that, on one occasion, his master had stopped the carriage for the purpose of giving a lift to a respectable, though not well-to-do, pedestrian, and in another instance, a working-class woman and her tired little one had been invited to ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... violent assemblage of the same kind. They made their way through it and saw beyond, a captain, a corporal and six private soldiers standing, face to face, with the crowd. Men were jeering at them; boys hurling abusive epithets. The boys, as they are apt to do, reflected, with some exaggeration, the passions of their elders. It was a crowd of rough fellows—mostly wharfmen and sailors. Solomon sensed the danger in the situation. He and Jack moved out of the jeering mob. Then suddenly a thing happened which may have saved one or both of their lives. The Captain drew his sword ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... yet taught me rigidly to chastise myself into truth; nor had it been in the least aided by the example of the agreeable Enoch. Perhaps I did not even, at the moment, suspect myself to be guilty of exaggeration. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly. On the moon his character seemed to deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome. In a little while his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... a room where eight gas-burners were in full blaze, and yet its two great demoniac-looking eyes (or what appeared to be eyes) shone more brightly than the most brilliant of precious stones—with an intensity, it will be no exaggeration to say, equal to the electric light. The effect was perfectly startling, and ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... truly!" rudely exclaimed Aaron Rockharrt, giving way, in his blind egotism, to utter recklessness of assertion, to gross injustice and exaggeration. "What have you done to him, Corona? Tell ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... crack airman, who had worked for hours to do it, but the best machine we had at the 'drome where I learned flying would only do six thousand, and no one could get her up there under forty minutes. She was a fine machine, too, as machines went in those days. To-day it is no exaggeration to say that ten thousand feet above the earth is low to a flier. Everyone goes to twenty thousand continually, and many of the biggest fights take place from seventeen thousand to twenty thousand ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... that seemed rather to grate on his warm feelings; and having owned that his seeing my Newfoundland dog well fed and lodged would be a great obligation, I withdrew to fret alone over my exile to this foreign land. You may call this an exaggeration, but it is no such thing. I delight in dwelling upon my reluctant approach to the land that I was to love ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... subject. Such convulsions of piety, they will say, are not sane. If, however, they will have the patience to read to the end, I believe that this unfavorable impression will disappear; for I there combine the religious impulses with other principles of common sense which serve as correctives of exaggeration, and allow the individual reader to draw as moderate ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... however, has remained, a testimony, if you like, to my courage or a proof of my rashness. What I care to remember best is the testimony of some French readers who volunteered the opinion that in those hundred pages or so I had managed to render "wonderfully" the spirit of the whole epoch. Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even so I hug it still to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I was trying to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch—never purely militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... exaggeration to say that his triumph that week was a regal one. For five successive nights and a Saturday matinee the culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him discourse of their "fellow savages." It was a lecture event wholly ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her mother. Yes, thirty years ago Susan had been just as rude to him. But he was thirty years younger then; he was not a sage of sixty then. He continued to blush. He was raging. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to assert that his health was momentarily in peril. He glanced for an instant at Helen, and saw that her nostrils were twitching. Then he looked hurriedly away, and rose. The captain of the bowling club excusably assumed that James was at length going ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... better than those of the prints issued at the time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent imaginary,—altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single military engagement had taken place;—the artist had "flushed to anticipate the scene." In these prints the Russians were depicted as fleeing in utter rout, leaving their officers—very fine-looking ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... general account, even contemporary, such statements might suggest a violent suspicion of exaggeration. We possess the means of testing it. The Irish State Papers of the time contain the ample reports and letters, from day to day, of the energetic and resolute Englishmen employed in council or in the field—men of business like Sir William Pelham, Sir Henry Wallop, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... warfare followed before the decisive battle of Gaveren, in July, 1453, forced them sadly to succumb. There was no other course open to them. Not only were they defeated but their numbers were decimated.[17] With full allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the loss was very heavy. Terms scornfully rejected at an earlier date were, in 1453, accepted with every humiliating detail. More, the defeated rebels were bidden to be grateful that their kind sovereign had imposed nothing further to the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... receive them even when no one intends to wound us. Self-love has a great imagination. It can see a great many evils where none exist. It is like a petulant and spoiled child. I remember one child of whom it was said, "If you just crook your finger at him, he will cry." Thinking that this was an exaggeration, I tried it, and the boy cried. There are some people six feet tall who are hurt just that easily. They are truly "lovers of their own selves." Paul said, "When I became a man, I put away childish things." It is high time others were doing the same thing. Suppose Christ had been as sensitive ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... What vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or excuse takes effect, and, if they perceive it does not succeed, what address in sliding into a different one. What quickness to avail themselves of any mistake, or apparent concession, in the examiner or reprover. What copious rhetoric in exaggeration of the cause which tempted to do wrong, or of the great good hoped to be effected by the little deviation from the right,—a good surely enough to excuse so trifling an impropriety. What facility of placing between themselves and the censure, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Punishment, like Rogozhin in The Idiot, Stavrogin in The Possessed were supermen before Nietzsche, but all half mad. A famous alienist has declared that three-fourths of Dostoievsky's characters are quite mad. This is an exaggeration, though there are many about whom the aura of madness and melancholy hovers. Dostoievsky himself was epileptic; poverty and epilepsy were his companions through a life crowded with unhappiness. (Born 1822, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... picturesqueness to the Renaissance Garden of the Louvre, a development of the same spirit which inspired this artist in his collaboration at Chenonceaux. This was the formula which produced the jardin delectable, an exaggeration of the taste of the epoch, but still critical ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Feder was not wrong. There was not a word of exaggeration in what he said of Spezia. It could contain all the harbours of France and England, and have room for all the fleets of Europe besides. About seven miles in depth, and varying in width from two to three and a half, it is fissured on every side ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... only a moderate exaggeration to say that when Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency, he was an unknown man; he had performed no important public service; his election was not due to personal popularity, nor to the strength of the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... trembled, and Wilfrid bent his head near her, pressing her hand, and said, "Not only I, but Countess Alessandra Ammiani exonerates you from blame. As she loves her country, you love yours. My words to Karl were an exaggeration of what I know and think. Only tell me this;—if Nagen captures Count Ammiani, how is he likely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will as James van Artevelde had for a long time." It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... been Governor of New York; Patrick Calhoun, who monopolized the utilities of San Francisco and other cities, presided likewise over the city's inner politics. The Public Service Corporation of New Jersey also comprised a large political power in city and state politics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the most active period, that from 1880 to 1905, the powers that developed city railway and lighting companies in American cities were identically the same owners that had the most to do with city ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... according to the strong expression of St. Cyril, the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood. Even at present, there is scarcely a Roman Catholic cathedral which does not display some pretended pieces of this relic; and it has been computed, with some exaggeration, that were they all collected together, they might prove sufficient for building a ship of the line. To account for this extraordinary diffusion of so limited a quantity, the Catholic writers have been obliged to assert its preternatural growth and vegetation, which the saint ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... hands perfectly passive; and with ninety-nine persons out of a hundred the startled interest in the movement even begets an unconscious desire to help it, which at times almost rises to a curious semi-conscious self-deception, a voluntary exaggeration of the marvellous. Yet nothing makes the ordinary sitter angrier than to be told he has helped to move the table. It is as though he were accused of cheating at whist, or worse, of playing a foolish card. Take half a dozen persons at random, and there ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... have indeed been told, that they had sent orders to make a formal demand of Longchamps from Congress, and had immediately countermanded these orders. You know whether this be true. If it be, I should suspect the first orders to have been surprised from them by some exaggeration, and that the latter was a correction of their error, in the moment of further reflection. Upon the whole, there certainly appears to me no reason to urge the State, in which the fact happened, to any violation of their laws, nor to set a precedent which might hereafter be used in cases more interesting ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors—to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the Earth's past. That it has had much to do with those larger changes of climate of which we have evidence, seems unlikely, since there is reason to think that these have been far slower and more lasting; but that it must have entailed a rhythmical exaggeration and mitigation of the climates otherwise produced, seems beyond question. And it seems also beyond question that there must have been a consequent rhythmical change in the distribution of organisms—a rhythmical change to which we here wish to draw attention, as one cause of minor breaks ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... has enjoyed under Liberal rule a period of prosperous tranquillity, favourable both to development and consolidation; and it is no exaggeration to say that it was never more strong or more peacefully united than at the present moment. The confidence which the whole country, irrespective of party, feels in Sir Edward Grey in the present European crisis, is the measure of our success in foreign affairs. The gathering of the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... little tales that were not really stupid but had not the slightest pretensions to style or literary talent. She was very plain and exceedingly stout, which produced a comical effect, especially as she was inclined to exaggeration ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Empire opens at what is termed the Golden Gate of Constantinople; and it may be said in passing, that this splendid epithet is not so lightly bestowed as may be expected from the inflated language of the Greeks, which throws such an appearance of exaggeration about them, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements—all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth—were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to a young man of Osborne's age to feel himself continually hampered for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the liberal—almost luxurious table at the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... descriptions of it published, but he could find no periodical or newspaper willing to print his statements. In Bridger's case, however, there was ground for doubt, inasmuch as he had a reputation for exaggeration, and the facts that he related about the wonders of the Yellowstone ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... which is explained by the different transformations which were originally the same in the embryo. The clitoris of woman corresponds to the penis of man, the labia majora to the scrotum, etc. In certain individuals these rudiments are more strongly developed, and may by exaggeration and transition lead to pathological hermaphrodism (Chapter I); such are bearded women, and those possessing a large clitoris, or beardless men with effeminate bodies and small sexual organs. Such cases are not examples of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Benedictine of the school of Cluny, bred in the traditions of that illustrious Order, to which, without exaggeration, it may be said that we owe almost everything that is best worth having in our Western civilisation. For upon what does human society rest in the last resort if not upon the two great pillars of the rule of St. Benedict—Obedience and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... pepper-and-salt color, descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet six in height, and wore a conical-pointed cap of nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a "swallow-tail," but was much obscured by the swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling round the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer's shoulders ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and cuffed my ears whenever he got a chance. He made me do his share as well as my own of the labor of cleaning the stables, and feeding and caring for the horses, sitting by and giving orders with a comical exaggeration of the manner of Captain Sproule. In short, he was hazing me unmercifully—as every one on the boat knew, though some of the things he did to me I do not think the captain would have permitted if he had ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Indian, to which circumstance the lake owes its appellation. We afterwards learned that the only bear in this part of the country is the brown bear, and that this by no means possesses the ferocity which the Indians, with their usual love of exaggeration, ascribe to it. The fierce grizzly bear, which frequents the sources of the Missouri, is not found on the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... spout as high as the flag pole in Virginia City, which was about sixty (60) feet high. The more I pondered upon this statement, the more I was impressed with the probability of its truth. If he had told me of the existence of falls one thousand feet high, I should have considered his story an exaggeration of a phenomenon he had really beheld; but I did not think that his imagination was sufficiently fertile to originate the story of the existence of a spouting geyser, unless he had really seen one, and I therefore was inclined ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... fifty, and increases it in another to two hundred and fifty. Ramesay, governor of Montreal, who hated Hertel de Rouville, and bore no love to Vaudreuil, says that fifty-six women and children were murdered on the way to Canada,—which is a gross exaggeration. (Ramesay au Ministre, 14 Novembre, 1704.) The account by Dr. Ethier in the Revue Canadienne of 1874 is drawn entirely from the Redeemed Captive of Williams, with running comments by the Canadian ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... interests), it was raining heavily that morning. I knew, therefore, that I should probably find her in her own sitting-room. When I knocked at her door, with George's letter crumpled up in my hand, with George's hopes in full possession of my heart, it is no exaggeration to say that my nerves were almost as much fluttered, and my ideas almost as much confused, as they were on a certain memorable day in the far past, when I rose, in brand-new wig and gown, to set my future prospects at the bar on the hazard ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... His daring rides on his famous white charger were already the theme of song and story; and if the tale of his exploits, as told in camp and farm, sometimes bordered on the marvellous, the bare truth, stripped of all exaggeration, was sufficient in itself to make a hero. His reckless courage, his fine horsemanship, his skill in handling his command, and his power of stimulating devotion, were not the only attributes which incited admiration. "With such qualities," it is said, "were united the utmost generosity ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... bag-wig and the rest, and David Wilkie's sword—and also that the Laureate, so equipped, fell down upon both knees in the superfluity of etiquette, and had to be picked up by two lords-in-waiting. It is a large exaggeration I do not doubt—and then I never sympathised with the sighing kept up by people about that acceptance of the Laureateship which drew the bag-wig as a corollary after it. Not that the Laureateship honoured him, but that he honoured it; and that, so honouring it, he preserves ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's horse to praise and back him as his own. Or, for a need can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand[134]." Allowing for the exaggeration of satire, we cannot doubt that this portrait is in the main correct. It indicates a man who follows fashion, even in swearing, to the excess of foppery, who delights in scandal, who contracts debts with an easy conscience, and who is withal a merry fellow and a wit. All this is in accordance ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... words. His testimony is marked by the qualities for which he was known both on the civil and military side of his career. These qualities were clearness of thought, accuracy and readiness of memory, directness of expression and the absence of remarks in the nature of exaggeration or embellishment. The character of the man and the history of events may gain something from an examination of his testimony upon three important points to which it related: the opinion of President Lincoln in regard to the reconstruction of the government; the opinion ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... shot which opened the battle of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of beauty and courage, but in some degree, at any rate, especially possess them. Thus there is nothing really mean or sycophantic about the popular literature which makes all its marquises seven feet high. It is snobbish, but it is not servile. Its exaggeration is based on an exuberant and honest admiration; its honest admiration is based upon something which is in some degree, at any rate, really there. The English lower classes do not fear the English upper classes in the least; nobody could. They simply and freely and sentimentally worship ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... open, just, straightforward, liberal and tolerant, with much sound good sense. He never breaks his word, and you may rely on him, but wild and extravagant, courting adventures and dangers, and with a very strange, short, rough manner, an exaggeration of that short manner of speaking which his poor brother had. He is shy in society, which makes him still more brusque, and he does not know (never having been out of his own country or even out in Society) what to say to the number ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... "That's exaggeration, dear—which you are always protesting against in others. We are tiresome and self-willed, but we know very well how much we owe to you, and your care for us. It hurts us as much as it hurts you when we disagree; but we've got to live our ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lest it should be thought that Moll could not possibly play her part so admirably in this business, despite the many secret instructions given by the longheaded Don, I do protest that I have set down no more than I recollect, and that without exaggeration. Further, it must be observed that in our common experience many things happen which would seem incredible but for the evidence of our senses, and which no poet would have the hardihood to represent. 'Tis true that in this, as in other more surprising particulars to follow, Moll did surpass ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... aspects, and for these reasons, more intensely and characteristically American. With perhaps ninety per cent of identity there is ten per cent of divergence, and this ten per cent I have emphasized even to exaggeration. We know our friends by their slight differences in feature or expression, not by their common humanity. Much of this divergence is already fading away. Scenery and climate remain, but there is less elbow-room, and the unearned ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in Madagascar—a traffic which is the slave-trade in all but the name. The French flag is sullied by being allowed to be used by slaving dhows—an iniquity owing to which our brave Captain Brownrigg met his death not long ago. Is it any exaggeration to say that an increase of French influence in these seas is one ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... tell you the exact truth, to avoid exaggeration, I should say I fell in love with you the first time I met you. It seems to me now as though it had been so. And the second time—you remember it was one very hot day last July, when we both lunched ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... upon Rose with a pretext of great devotion for the service in which her father was engaged, and many apologies for the freedom he must necessarily use for the support of his people. It was at this moment that Rose learned, by open-mouthed fame, with all sorts of exaggeration, that Waverley had killed the smith at Cairnvreckan, in an attempt to arrest him; had been cast into a dungeon by Major Melville of Cairnvreckan, and was to be executed by martial law within three days. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... or exaggeration there may have been in the stories of the sweating and driving that prevailed at Dauber and Botchit's, it was an indisputable fact that the other builders found it very difficult to compete with them, and between the lot of them what work there was to do was all ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... insincerity of our daily life make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. But we enjoy it because of its unexpectedness, its separateness, its unlikeness to the ordinary course of existence. It is like a huge, strange, gorgeous flower, an exaggeration and intensification of such flowers as we know; but a flower without roots, unique, never to be reproduced. It is fitting that its portrait should be painted; but, once done, it is done with; we cannot fill our picture-gallery with it. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... once under his orders, went with him to the Mediterranean, and there speedily made his mark, being transferred from admiral to admiral with ever-growing tokens of reliance. Despite the lapse of time, and the long interval of peace, it is no exaggeration to say that there is a direct connection of cause and effect between his transfer to Hood's fleet, in the harbor of New York, and the battle of Cape St. Vincent, in 1797, when he emerged from merely ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... distinguished judge,... "that the standard of a Double First was getting to be something beyond human ability," seems hardly an exaggeration.—Ibid., p. 224. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... this exaggeration, and looked round to see what Ernest thought of such talk. But ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... I read now soon goes out of my head, and I had forgotten that he implies that my views explain the universe; but it is a most monstrous exaggeration. The more one thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance. Though it does make one proud to see what science has achieved during the last half-century. This has been brought vividly before my mind by having ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... guest was truly American, the humor of suggestive restraint and exaggeration both. He narrated his experiences, which had resulted in the loss of his fortune and the collapse of his hopes, with a face like a deacon's, and with a quaint and most charming sense of the ludicrousness ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... some difficulty at Madrid in procuring admission into respectable society, where, if they find their way, they are invariably the objects of ridicule, from the absurd airs and grimaces in which they indulge,—their tendency to boasting and exaggeration, their curious accent, and the incorrect manner in which they speak and pronounce ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Yarmouth fishing. Let a stranger get into conversation with one or two of these hardy heroes, and he will be surprised at their intelligence and wide interests. He will certainly conclude that the young fisherman, Malcolm Macphail, whom Macdonald introduces in the novel mentioned, is no exaggeration, but true to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... way, using such a phrase as "holding on like life,"—a mixture of "holding on for his life," and "holding on like grim death." It came from his eager way of putting emphasis into what he was saying. This sometimes gave an air of exaggeration where it was not intended; but it gave, too, a noble air of strong and generous conviction; as, for instance, when he gave his evidence before the Royal Commission on vivisection and came out with his words about cruelty, "It deserves detestation ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... act towards it as towards a friend with frailties, who is under the prosecution of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in that case, not to inflame the public mind against the obnoxious person by any exaggeration of his faults. It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities that he may happen to possess. But when the man is to be amended, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... messenger of the Covenant and Elijah the Restorer. In 1900 Mr. Dowie said: "About twenty-two thousand have been baptized by triune immersion up to the present, and this includes practically all the members." This, however, was a great exaggeration. In 1901 the head-quarters of the church was moved to Zion City, forty-two miles north of Chicago. He preached the threefold gospel of Salvation, Healing, and Holy Living. Dowie differed from Christian Science ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there are everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of the crimes and calamities of the human race.' I think that there is exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With regard to virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has already observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this causes the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... manifesting itself in an exaggeration of the normal pigment of the skin, asthenia, irritability of the gastro-intestinal tract, and weakness and irregularity of the heart's action: these symptoms being due to loss of function of the suprarenal glands. It is important to note, however, that Addison's Disease may occur without pigmentation, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... proclamation, which from one end to the other offends against truth. It has been published in many works. The season of the year for hostile landing is there very dexterously placed in the foreground; all the rest is a deceitful exaggeration. It must be observed that the proclamations which Bonaparte regarded as calculated to dazzle an ever too credulous public were amplifications often ridiculous and incomprehensible upon the spot, and which only excited the laughter of men of common ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... pearl, a single article of gold or ivory, a single picture, whether on panel or on canvas, which he did not hunt up and examine, and, if it pleased his fancy, abstract. This is a great thing to say, you think. Well, mark how I say it. It is not for the sake of rhetorical exaggeration that I make this sweeping assertion, that I declare that this fellow did not leave a single article of the kind in the whole province. I speak not in the language of the professional accuser but in ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... understanding. The child distorts inevitably and dynamically. But the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. If a huge eye sits in the middle of the cheek, in a child's drawing, this shows that the deep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is the life-truth, even if it ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence |
