"Exaggeration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... capacity of one of them I have already given in the chapter on Texas; so that their stately and dignified histories of the national squabbles of the last thirty years are equal to Cortez in gross exaggeration, and not a whit behind him in elegance ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... of Hindenburg is wider than the east—and the west; it permeates the business world and stiffens the economic backbone of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and flushed with the excitement of attracting so much attention, she was beginning to lose her head a little—just a little. Dysart noticed it in her nervous laughter; in a slight exaggeration of gesture with fan and flowers; in the quick movement of her restless little head, as though it were incumbent upon her to give to every man confronting her his own particular modicum of attention—which was not like a debutante, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... fatal gates, into such freedom and safety as Paris could then afford. Never again could she see a glass of red wine without a shudder, and it was generally believed that it was actually a glass of blood that she had swallowed, though she always averred that this was an exaggeration, and that it had been only her impression before tasting it that so horrible a draught ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been regarded as a human caricature and covered with ridicule. We obtain a very much higher idea of him if we compare him with other animals. Always and everywhere there has been a prejudiced insistence on his defects; we perceive them so easily because they are an exaggeration of our own; but he also possesses qualities of the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... believe that this is caused by a hot climate. Within the tropics heat often causes sheep to lose their fleeces, and on the other hand wet and cold act as a direct stimulus to the growth of hair; it is, however, possible that these changes may merely be an exaggeration of the regular yearly change of coat; and who will pretend to decide how far this yearly change, or the thick fur of arctic animals, or as I may add their white colour, is due to the direct action of a severe climate, and how far to the preservation ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... It was, without exaggeration, one of the most plainly furnished rooms she had ever seen. A long mahogany table with eight large mahogany chairs, a half inch pile of velvety rug on the floor and a huge chandelier in the middle of the ceiling constituted the furniture. Not a picture, not a cabinet or filing case broke the blankness ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... "So far as exaggeration is concerned, I am not exaggerating. This is the way I reason: I have suspected you unjustly. That is nothing. It is our right to cherish suspicion, although suspicion directed above ourselves is an abuse. But without proofs, in a fit of rage, with the object ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was growing fast, and Alton was already its most considerable suburb. The lines of modern life had crept up to within call of the old Field before the death of Samuel. So the old fellow was not indulging in much exaggeration when he bragged towards the end that he wouldn't take twenty-five thousand dollars for his property, although ten years earlier he had been eager to sell for five ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on art, together producing innovation. And the more superficial the aesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style succeed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by exaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity; a state of affairs especially noticeable in our ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... exhibited in 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... corn baskets, and the utensil was discovered lying among some rubbish in one corner; but we must not give too much faith to all these stories, the anecdotes of those remote periods being very subject to exaggeration. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... And yet, in justice to Belgium, I must tell some of the least dreadful of the things I have seen and only those that have come to me through personal experience. I do not tell from hearsay, and I tell the truth without exaggeration. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... gentlemanly deportment, the parental care of their crews, and the strict justice of thousands of captains, cannot in the least be deteriorated by a single act of tyranny, by a solitary member of their gallant body; and, as to exaggeration, let it be remembered that, in the very same year, and on the very same station that my tricing-up to the truck occurred, another post-captain tarred and feathered one of his young gentlemen, and kept him in that state, a plumed ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... gunboats was limited to the single Soudanese soldier, who died of his wounds, and a few trifling damages. The Arab slaughter is variously estimated, one account rating it at 1,000 men; but half that number would probably be no exaggeration. The gunboats fired in the two days' bombardment 650 shells and several thousand rounds of Maxim-gun ammunition. They then returned to Berber, reporting fully on the enemy's position ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... between the queen and the other princesses; and that the familiarity subsisting in the court was extreme." But Marie Antoinette replied, in defense of the king and herself, that there was "great exaggeration in these reports, as indeed there was about every thing that went on at the court; that the familiarity spoken of was seen but by very few. It is not for me," she said, "to judge; but it seems to me that what exists among us is only ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Germans, or with German sympathies, were attacked. Other raids followed, none of them doing serious military damage, but usually killing or wounding innocent non-combatants. The stupid policy of secrecy which they maintained during the first year of the war unfortunately permitted great exaggeration of the real damages which ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "was remarkable in the annals of the colony. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it witnessed the creation of Virginia as an independent community." From that year Sandys and his followers maintained their ascendency, and a high degree of energy and statesmanlike wisdom marked the administration ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... make the son of a simple esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three wives.[187] This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy (p. 081) of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... holy religion, and despise their parents, or, if they have the courage to hold out, their tender minds are subject to numberless petty annoyances; they must endure a species of martyrdom. This is no exaggeration; I have it from good authority. Practically speaking, the present common school system is but a gigantic scheme ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that slight exaggeration of her chin was more ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... old man woman Trenholme encountered when he entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food Bates set before him; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new country hospitality is considered indispensable to an easy conscience that he had received ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Flanders, or in any other country, duke, count, prince, or other who can have had a country at his 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
... were all bad pennies, which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the Lusitania. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations, apparently proceeding ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... apparent good sense in all the usual affairs of life, have publicly given in their adhesion, and encouraged the doctrine by their example, or spread it abroad by their precepts. That the above summary of their tenets may not he deemed an exaggeration we enter into particulars, and refer the incredulous that human folly in the present age could ever be pushed so far, to chapter ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... he said. 'I ought to have known better than to take a lady too literally at her word. Permit me to remind you, however, that the circumstances are too serious for anything in the nature of—let us say, an exaggeration or a joke. You shall hear what I propose, without further preface.' He paused, and resumed his figurative use of the fly imprisoned in his hand. 'Here is Mr. Armadale. I can let him out, or keep him in, just as I please—and he knows it. I say ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... politic the impress of the Loyalist migration is so deep that it would be difficult to overestimate it. It is no exaggeration to say that the United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers saw no future before Canada but that of a French colony under the British crown. 'Barring a catastrophe shocking to think of,' wrote Sir Guy ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... An exaggeration, yet the number of such names is considerable, as may be seen by consulting the appendix to Asher's Bibliography of ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... beautiful gems, which were tempting but high-priced. To say that, on an average, three of these men knocked at our door during the morning bath, while as many were waiting for us at the luncheon hour, literally camping out on the balcony during the evening hours, is no exaggeration. Then the cards they presented, the insinuations they indulged in with regard to the other man's goods (who was waiting outside)! It really was amusing, but it grew tiresome, and was demoralizing, because one was compelled to "bargain" if anything was purchased at all, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of Cupples, Upham & Co., it has become one of the most complete retail book establishments in the country, and so popular a resort that all Boston may with a little exaggeration be said to pass through it in a day. To every stranger it is, from its present literary attractiveness, a place not to be overlooked. The literary men of Boston make it their lounging-place and chief rendezvous. To ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... which makes it a sin to partake of any liquor, however prudently, it was then never heard in the land. On the whole, the clergy of all denominations might be set down as brandy-and-water men, a few occasionally carrying out their principle to exaggeration. But the Rev. Mr. Whittle was a sober man, and, though he saw no great harm in enlivening his heart and cheering his spirits with brandy taken in small quantities, he was never known to be any the worse for his libations. It was the same with the deacon, though he ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... But he should never forget that every influence which he can bring to bear in his daily work to make science pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in the use of pure, correct English, free from exaggeration, from slang, and from mannerism, goes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash distasteful ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... helped his companions and himself. In this age of moral tours de force, one scarcely dare say anything favourable of a liquid that even bears the name of wine, or extol the shape of a bottle. It is truly the era of exaggeration. Nothing is treated in the old-fashioned, natural, common sense way. Virtue is no longer virtue, unless it get upon stilts; and, as for sin's being confined to "transgression against the law of God," audacious would be the wretch who should presume to limit the sway of the societies ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... not had much success in establishing their own peculiar form of worship, except for a little while at a time, and the greater part of the people were at this time more or less closely identified with the village corporation. So that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that all Gershom was moved to welcome the Reverend ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... law, i. e., the Kantian ideal of truth and virtue. This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Kantian doctrine ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... essential in lawn-making is a proper kind of roller to use as occasion requires. Few people realize just how important a part a roller plays in the upkeep of any grass area, but it is no exaggeration to say that without one, successful results will be difficult if not impossible of achievement. Use a roller—a heavy roller—on your lawn early in the spring to repair the damage that the freezing and thawing ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... the girl seemed only to increase momently. She showed plainly that she regarded this brass-buttoned official as one unbearably insolent in his demeanor toward her. Nevertheless, she condescended to reply, with an exaggeration of the aristocratic ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... fire-eating rival was anxious at all hazards for another encounter. It was only with the greatest difficulty, as Brantome relates in entertaining fashion, that the King was able to bring about a reconciliation between them. Such an episode, reported with exaggeration of details, might well have suggested the narrative in Act II ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... be treated by you with actual disrespect. My sister's child and I your guest, not to speak of your aunt, and you your mother's son, and her host besides! It is a slap in the face, Adrian, a slap in the face which has been a very bitter pill to have to swallow, I assure you—I may say without exaggeration, in fact, that it has cut ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... probity of purpose taught him, and which he ever after through life preserved. He kept within the right limits of whatever doctrine he embraced, and held a measure in all his political principles,—knowing that the best, in common with the worst, tend, by a law of all party, to exaggeration and extremes. Beyond this temperateness of mind nothing could move him. Thus guarded, by a rare equity of the understanding, from excess as to measures, he was equally guarded by a charity and a gentleness of heart ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peculiarity. He wore a short Chinese-shaped jacket, which his wife had made out of blue linen, and a flat Chinese hat to match, which they had constructed together on a basis of cardboard. But his thighs were enclosed in a pair of absurdly ample riding-breeches of an impressive check and cut to a comic exaggeration of the English pattern. He had bought the cloth for these at the tailor's in Montreux. Below them were very tight leggings, also English. In reply to a question as to what or whom he supposed himself ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... probably much exaggeration, but it has its significance as a picture of life in the dark ages, from one to the manner born. So far as Fredegonde was concerned, the marriage of Rigouthe removed from her path one possible ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... finds, on different parts of his dress, proofs abundant of the company he has kept. The only single spot absolutely secure is a man's face—and that would not be, were it not for the fear of a duel. That there is not the shadow of exaggeration in this description, coarse as it is, and coarse as it has been my intention to make it, all Americans, and all travellers who have ever been within an American hotel, steam-boat, or rail-car—all will testify. And the result of it all is, I suppose, that we are the freest and most enlightened ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... is to shew the proofs of nobility, to be admitted knight of Malta), that they do not content themselves with using the natural means, but fly to all sorts of quackeries, to avoid the scandal of being past child-bearing, and often kill themselves by them. Without any exaggeration, all the women of my acquaintance that have been married ten years, have twelve or thirteen children; and the old ones boast of having had five-and-twenty or thirty a-piece, and are respected according to the number they have produced. When they are with child, it ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... came, Veronica knew that Taquisara had not been guilty of exaggeration in describing his friend's character. Gianluca was all that his friend had painted him, and perhaps more. Unfortunately, he was not at all the kind of man whom Veronica would ever be inclined to fancy for a husband. It was easy for her to respect him, as she ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... There were some simple-minded folk to whom the chime typified a God essentially masculine, and like a man, hugely exaggerated, but somewhat amorphous, because they could not see exactly in what the exaggeration consisted except in the size of him. They pictured him sitting alone on a throne of ivory and gold inlaid with precious stones; and recited the catalogue of those mentioned in the Book of the Revelation ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Property, the Constitution of '48, in spite of its weaknesses, had not spared it. The State might, in the name of public utility, henceforth take whatever it thought would suit it. Senecal declared himself in favour of authority; and Frederick noticed in his remarks the exaggeration which characterised what he had said himself to Deslauriers. The Republican even inveighed against the masses ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... time of which I write, the good predominated over the bad in the countenance, and he was one from whom a stranger would have asked a favour with tolerable faith that it would be granted. He was accompanied by his wife, who might, without exaggeration, have been called a lovely woman, although now her face was swollen with crying, and often hidden behind her apron. She had the fresh beauty of the agricultural districts; and somewhat of the deficiency of sense in her countenance, which is likewise characteristic of the rural inhabitants in comparison ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 his becomes ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... expressing her thoughts, on such occasions, than is usual with girls of fourteen. She first drew our attention to the view by one of her strong, eloquent bursts of eulogium; and Lucy met the remark with a truthful, simple answer, that showed abundant sympathy with the sentiment, though with less of exaggeration of manner and feeling, perhaps. I seized the moment as favourable for my purpose, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... shops, and won't buy his own gloves. He bought a pair of boots the other day (because I went down on my knees to ask him, and the water was running in through his soles), and he will not soon get over it. Without exaggeration, he would rather leap down among the lions after your glove, as the knight of old, than walk into a shop for you. If I could but go out, there would be no difficulties; but I am shut up in my winter prison, in spite of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... last census; and the four years since that census have witnessed an increase of nearly twenty-three per cent. This final estimate is of course liable to correction by next year's census, but its error will be found on the side of under-statement, rather than of exaggeration. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... always been told of the wonderful loyalty of the Dutch. It is possible that had war broken out three months ago that loyalty would have been demonstrated for all time. War after three months of hesitation—for such it was considered—has proved too severe a test, and it is no exaggeration to say that a considerable part of the Colony trembles on the verge of rebellion. On such a state of public opinion the effect of any important military reverse would ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... as perhaps you may not know, is, without any exaggeration, the most delightful paper in the world. It contains nothing that one dislikes to read about, such as accidents, murders, suicides, politics, and criticisms of concerts; it contains nothing whatever of such ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... above characterised the captain as "surly," the mate "brutal," and the crew a set of "ruffians": I have spoken without exaggeration. With an exception or two, a more villainous gang I never encountered—of course not before that time—for that was not likely; but never since either, and it has several times been the fortune of my life to mix in ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Irish exaggeration is as often seen in plenary curses as in plenary blessings; both have the quality of humour. The curses are partly compounded of robust delight, like the joy of London cabmen in repartee; and the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... not have said more, nor less. It is the truth. His death did eclipse, it was like a storm." Boswell: "But why nations? Did his gaiety extend further than his own nation?" Johnson: "Why, sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, 'nations' may be said—if we allow the Scotch to be a nation, and to have ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... minister whose pastorate had begun at about the same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or exaggeration: ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... lawlessness of the two principal individuals in the vessel, that she saw nothing that was visionary in such an expectation. Even the tales of the time, which recounted the desperate acts of the freebooter, with not a little of wild and fanciful exaggeration, did not forget to include numberless striking instances of marked, and even chivalrous generosity. In short, he bore the character of one who, while he declared himself the enemy of all, knew how to distinguish between the weak and the strong, and ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... a little exaggeration about this, for Dick was very far from exulting over Roswell, otherwise he certainly would not have volunteered to carry the bundle himself. But it often happens that older persons than Roswell are not above a little misrepresentation now ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... arrivals. Mr Polly had a pleasant way of getting the green ones round him, and, by detailing some of the wild scenes and incidents of his voyages in the Saskatchewan, of leading them on from truth to exaggeration, and from that to fanciful composition, wherein he would detail, with painful minuteness, all the horrors of Indian warfare, and the improbability of any one who entered those dreadful regions ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... not leave out of account the influence of the Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The Descent of Man appeared precisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached in pulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that "it may be said, with little exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creeds which may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is none which may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win the reputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for a bishopric. The popular state of ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... us to remark that this is a fact. Indeed, we may say here, once for all, that all the important statements and incidents in this tale are facts, or founded on facts, with considerable modification, but without intentional exaggeration. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... thereto of the glass making industries of the United States. The change from the solid to the gaseous fuel has been made so rapidly, and has effected such marked results in both the processes of manufacture and the product, that it is no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the entire industrial world are turned with envious admiration upon the cities and neighborhoods blessed with so unique and valuable a fuel. The regions in which natural gas is found are for the most part coincident with ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Trocadero, they one day watched the duel, when the guns at Meudon were replying vigorously to the fire of the forts, "I must modify my first opinions as to the courage of the Communists. They have learnt to fight, and allowing for all the exaggeration and bombast of their proclamations, they now stand admirably; they have more than once retaken positions from which they have been driven, and although very little is said about their losses, I was talking yesterday to a surgeon in one of the hospitals, and he tells me that already they must ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... There is no exaggeration in saying that this was positively delightful to the anxious father, and that, under the circumstances, it went far towards restoring his peace of mind. It was, therefore, no wonder that the conversation, thus initiated, flowed on in a continuous channel of gaiety, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Some exaggeration must be allowed for in all this account of Alfred the Great. But the fact that he left a stamp in his age so deep,—that nothing except what was good and great has been ascribed to him,—that the very fictions told of him are ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the Judges at high jinks upon the bench—to whom, all in a muck-sweat and ablaze with the fervour of conversion, enter Black Ned, the stout publican, and big Tab, his slut of a wife,—these are drawn after the broad British style of humorous illustration, which combines a frank exaggeration of the characteristic lines with, at times, a certain grace in deformity. Here at least is downright belief in the invisible, here is genuine conviction driven home by the Spirit of God and the terror of hell-fire. Black Ned and the slut Tabby as yet ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... language of half-humorous exaggeration, but a literal account of a mind as much overthrown from its true balance as is disclosed in the most morbid page of Rousseau's Confessions. For months and months after the burden of 'dull, insensible wretchedness,' 'bitter heartache,' weighed upon him with unabated oppression. More than a year ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... was perhaps not much out of eleven millions, but it was a salvage not to be despised! Why did he say half a million! Well, why not? If the Magpie knew of a single transaction of eighty thousand, and there had been many transactions during the day, a half million was little likely to prove an exaggeration—and the less likely in view of the fact that, if those in the Crime Club were preparing for an emergency, they would not stint themselves in the disposal ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... his death. And not only was there the tailor's shop to live down, but on his mother's side he was the grandson of a publican, Michael Macnamara. Meredith liked to boast that his mother was "pure Irish"—an exaggeration, according to Mr. Ellis—but he said nothing about Michael Macnamara of "The Vine." At the same time it was the presence not of a bar sinister but of a yardstick sinister in his coat of arms that chiefly filled ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was a girl very reserved and cold to all appearances (in reality, she was very passionate), precise in attending to her religious duties, even a little strict, with her exaggeration of the Christian austerity in her hate of all the brutalities and all the careless morals that paganism condoned. Nevertheless, this rigid soul knew how to bend when it was necessary. Monnica had tact, suppleness, and, when it was needed, a very ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... a constitutional affection 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... could on the subject, and must record a little book called "Aunt Sally, or the Cross the Way to Freedom," as being the most faithful account of the evils of slavery we have met with. It is the story of a female slave's life, and is said to be strictly true and devoid of all exaggeration, and it is a most touching account of the power of religion in her case, in upholding her through a long life of ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... exclaimed Darvid, with a slight smile. "I observe more and more that exaggeration is a disease in my family. I should prefer ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Clement VII. If he finds it impossible to restrain his invective against these Pontiffs, who heaped favours and honours upon him, what but virulence can be expected of him when he writes of Alexander VI? He is largely to blame for the flagrant exaggeration of many of the charges brought against the Borgias; that he hated them we know, and that when he wrote of them he dipped his golden Tuscan pen in vitriol and set down what he desired the world to believe rather than what contemporary documents ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... much exaggeration, can really be called the garden spot of the world, and there is no doubt but that when the Stars and Stripes wave permanently over it, and there is an influx of American enterprise and wealth, there will be a marvelous increase ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... hour of Kearney street I could raise a dozen men for any wild adventure, from pulling down a statue to searching for the Cocos Island treasure." This is hardly an exaggeration, it was the Rialto of the desperate, Street of ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... or more credulous, more eager to run after quackery. Especially is this true in regard to remedies for diseases, and the faith in healers and quacks outside of the regular, educated professors of the medical art. Is this an exaggeration? Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country, some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of them injurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignorance of the nature of the disease or ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Henry to France various accounts are delivered down, and different calculations have been made. The song of Agincourt raises the sum of the "right good company" to "thirty thousand stout men and three:" and probably this total, embracing servants and attendants of every kind, is not at all an exaggeration of the number actually transported from England to Normandy; though, if by "stout men" we are to understand warriors able to handle the spear, the bow, the sword, and the battleaxe, we must not reckon them at more than ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... were not affected by the changes made in America; the change of nationality did affect them to a certain extent. A young girl, Florence St. Vincent, afterward Mrs. Browne, represents, here, with dramatic exaggeration, of course, a type of young girl more or less familiar to all of us. In England she is not a type, but an eccentric personality, with which the audience must be made acquainted by easy stages. It ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politics, notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the Church was in danger had not yet subsided. The "Last Day," written by a layman, was much approved by the ministry ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... thee till she wearied thee. He will understand that. Tell him also that sickness kept thee at home; that thy fever was increased by disappointment at not being able to visit Naples and hear his song; that thou wert assisted to health only by the hope of hearing him. Fear no exaggeration. Tigellinus promises to invent, not only something great for Caesar, but something enormous. I am afraid that he will undermine me; I am afraid too of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have great confidence in the pacific sentiments of the Emperor William, in spite of the too frequent exaggeration of some of his gestures. He will not allow himself to be drawn on farther than he chooses by the exuberant temperament and clumsy manners of his very intelligent Minister of Foreign Affairs (Kiderlen-Waechter). I feel, in general, less faith in the ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... sentiments of the Declaration of Independence and the actual treatment of the negro and the Chinaman. But in what may be called the retail traffic of life the American puts up with innumerable restrictions of his personal liberty. Max O'Rell has expatiated with scarcely an exaggeration on the wondrous sight of a powerful millionaire standing meekly at the door of a hotel dining-room until the consequential head-waiter (very possibly a coloured gentleman) condescends to point out to him the seat he may occupy. So, too, such petty officials as policemen ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... hardly an exaggeration to say that he owed more social enjoyment to the Thrales than to all the rest of his acquaintance put together. Holland House alone, and in its best days, would convey to persons living in our time an adequate ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... is the consideration of the influence of Christianity, and of the Church, on the investigation and elimination of disease. In this matter the Church deserves the severest censure. It is no exaggeration to say that she hindered the scientific progress of the world for centuries. She applied to the explanation of the causation of disease, the demon theories inherited from Egypt, Persia, and the East. The Bible itself reflects the views on demonology ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... rarely happened that never were men more incongruously grouped. Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation, with all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. Vavasour liked to be the Amphitryon of a cluster of personal enemies. He prided himself on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which veiled their ineffable disgust. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... a reading tour, Dickens wrote at Bideford the letter from which No. 23 has been copied. After writing that he could get nothing to eat or drink at the small inn, he wrote the sentence facsimiled. The exaggeration of the words is matched by the use of two capital T's in place of two small t's. The letter continues: "The landlady is playing cribbage with the landlord in the next room (behind a thin partition), and they seem quite comfortable." No. 24 is another instance of the ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... 12% less than sampling would indicate. This constancy of error in one direction has not been so generally acknowledged as would be desirable, and it must be allowed for in calculating final results. The causes of the exaggeration seem to be:— ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... 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 conclusions as ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... whose fame was such that she can without exaggeration be styled the goddess of witches, resembles in part the chase of the witch-hare by the black dog, and probably her story gave rise to ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... who follows in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... attention has not been specially drawn to the subject which these volumes aim to illustrate, the Condition of the People, might suspect that the Writer had been tempted to some exaggeration in the scenes which he has drawn and the impressions which he has wished to convey. He thinks it therefore due to himself to state that he believes there is not a trait in this work for which he has not the authority of his own observation, or the authentic evidence ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... life, and drifted back to the place whence they had come. [Footnote: Thus the increase of population is to be measured by the net gain of immigration over emigration, not by immigration alone. It is probably partly neglect of this fact, and partly simple exaggeration, that make the early statements of the additions to the Kentucky population so very untrustworthy. In 1783, at the end of the Revolution, the population of Kentucky was probably nearer 12,000 than 20,000, and it had grown ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... through the doorway. There was an ugly murmur coming up the staircase. Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel's last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it open; read it in an instant; and devoured it with kisses. His highly wrought feelings found their vent in a little allowable exaggeration. "She has saved my life!" he said, as he handed the ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... and ought to be potent," said the general, with an emphasis on influence, contradistinguishing it from power, and reducing the exaggeration of omnipotent by the short process ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be clearly proved, because perhaps after all it may be only a providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture. Well, this is precisely what I had said, which the writer, who has given occasion to this Volume, considered so irrational. I had said, as he quotes me, "In this day, and under our present circumstances, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of gambling and low vice flourished; and burglars, pickpockets, safe-blowers, and harlots made their way thither. Mr. W. A. Frisbie, the editor of a leading Minneapolis paper, described the situation in the following words: "It is no exaggeration to say that in this period fully 99% of the police department's efficiency was devoted to the devising and enforcing of blackmail. Ordinary patrolmen on beats feared to arrest known criminals for fear the prisoners would prove ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... there is some exaggeration in this, and that a marriage cannot actually be celebrated at midnight, over a champagne-and-lobster supper, by a clergyman who happened to drop in. But there can be no doubt that whatever the social merits or ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... for thinking that our epoch is more extraordinary than others, is for the most part that we are living in our own epoch, and have not lived in others. A mind attentive to this fact, and so placed upon its guard against all tendency to exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious thought has in former times passed through shocks as profound and as dangerous as those of which we are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking into account its extent in our ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... far from being in a proper state to afford him advice on the present occasion: he listened to nothing but jealousy, and breathed nothing but revenge; but these emotions being somewhat abated, in hopes that there might be calumny, or at least exaggeration in the charges against Lady Chesterfield, he desired her husband to suspend his resolutions, until he was more fully informed of the fact; assuring him, however, that if he found the circumstances such as he had related, he should regard and consult ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and became quite eloquent at this point. "Now, look at California," he continued; "there's a magnificent region, full of gold; not a mere myth, or an exaggeration, but a veritable fact, attested by the arrival of letters and gold-dust every month. Surely that land was made to be peopled; and the poor savages who dwell there need to be converted to Christianity, and delivered ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ship's log. The men speak of one heavy gale after another, in January, and the pumps going; but the log says, 'A puff of wind from the N.E.' And, here again, the entry exposes your exaggeration. One branch of our evidence contradicts the other; this comes of trying to prove too much. You must say the log was lost, went ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... 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 without precedent. The lectures of Artemus Ward,—["Artemus ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was taken with an itch for movement, and I walked for two hours and a half imagining all sorts of things, pretending that I was travelling in Russia or in Norway. When the tide came in and cracked the cakes of ice in the Seine and the thin ice which covered the stream, it was, without any exaggeration, superb. Then I thought of you and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... dear, what do you suppose Monsieur Paul will think, when you say you were born under a bridge?" exclaimed the excellent Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of metaphors, and ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... am quite serious when I say that in this respect the interviewers are artists. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to come to the point, particularly the sort of point which American journalists are supposed, with some exaggeration, to aim at. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to ask a total stranger on the spur of the moment for the exact inscription on his mother's grave; but I really think that if an Englishman once got so far as that he would go very much ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... their own law. When it became independent Greece was extremely ill administered under a nominal parliamentary government by politicians who made use of the brigands for their own purposes. The result was the state of things described with only pardonable exaggeration in Edmond About's amusing Roi de la montagne. An authentic and most interesting picture of the Greek brigands will be found in the story of the captivity of S. Soteropoulos, an ex-minister who fell into their hands. It ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place. The single fat thing on the soil was Marian herself; and she was an importation. Of the three classes of village, the village cared for by its ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy |
