"Exaggerating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was much censured for the amusements in which she indulged in the grounds of the Little Trianon, and vulgar rumour exaggerating their nature, no small portion of her personal unpopularity is attributable to this cause. The family of Louis XVI. appears to have suffered for the misdeeds of its predecessors, for it not being very easy to fancy anything much worse than the immoralities of Louis XV. the public were ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... shrink that he was conscious of a slight reassuring pressure on his arm as they moved forward, and for the moment I fear the young man felt like exaggerating his offense for the sake of proportionate sympathy. "Do you remember," he continued, "one evening when I told you some sea tales, you said you always thought there must be some story about the Pontiac? There was a story of the Pontiac, Miss Nott—a wicked ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... dies. It is even more truly within us than without us. Against their will the reformers of the Revolution remained saturated with the past, and could only continue, under other names, the traditions of the monarchy, even exaggerating the autocracy and centralisation of the old system. Tocqueville had no difficulty in proving that the Revolution did little but overturn that which was about ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... deputation of fifteen hundred select men, with instructions to march to Rome, and lay their complaints before the emperor. These military petitioners, by their own determined behaviour, by inflaming the divisions of the guards, by exaggerating the strength of the British army, and by alarming the fears of Commodus, exacted and obtained the minister's death, as the only redress of their grievances. [17] This presumption of a distant army, and their discovery ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... he said, exaggerating the deliberation of his utterance to the utmost limits of possibility, "if there is a reason, of which I know nothing, for not interfering with the convict Michaelis, perhaps it's just as well I didn't start the county police ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... boy. I am not exaggerating. You do not understand the vastness of these places. That glacier you are looking at is only one of the outlets of a huge reservoir of ice and snow, extending up there in the mountains for miles. It is forced down, as you see, bending into the irregularities of the valley where they are ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... extremely affecting." Unfortunately, however, for the lovers of the sensational, these pictures are not "correct," but are based on a false assumption which grew up out of a desire to heap contumely on Bunyan's enemies by exaggerating the severity of his protracted, but by no means harsh imprisonment. Being arrested by the warrant of a county magistrate for a county offence, Bunyan's place of incarceration was naturally the county gaol. There he undoubtedly ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... exaggerating an almost expected consequence that might never be repeated—especially if the child were most carefully and gradually reintroduced to the present terror. Later ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Christian influence at the North, and in England, to live even decent lives, the wonder is that the freedmen do as well as they do. How long before we can expect a race with such antecedents and environments to be fitted to be left to themselves? What answer must be given? I am not exaggerating the picture. I am only hinting at conditions of heathenism which exist. I am least of all blaming these poor and needy people; but none the less clear and strong comes the appeal for their moral and intellectual emancipation. The moralizing ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... WILL keep arising in my mind and finding utterance in impetuous speech. Why, therefore, should one not value oneself at a groat as one listens in fear and trembling to the roar and turmoil of the city? Maybe you think that I am exaggerating things—that this is a mere whim of mine, or that I am quoting from a book? No, no, Barbara. You may rest assured that it is not so. Exaggeration I abhor, with whims I have nothing to do, and ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... impressions of a sailor's life ... has been the aim. Neither exaggerating its hardships—they do not need it—nor highly coloring its delights, whatever those may be, the very plainest truth has been thought sufficient for the purpose in ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... not display a personality particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was one of those men who experience a morbid gratification in cataloguing all their sinister points of character, and exaggerating them at the same time; and in this picture, as in many others scattered about the De Vita Propria, the shadows may have been ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... common to most travellers, of speaking from feeling rather than from reason, she shows her readers the virtues and faults of the people among whom she travelled, without overestimating the former or exaggerating the latter. She found Swedes and Norwegians unaffected and hospitable, but sensual and indolent. Both good and evil she attributes to the influence of climate and to the comparatively low stage of culture attained in these northern countries. The long winter ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... shall not be accused of exaggerating the importance of this battle, which, according to the writer I have already quoted, was best proved by the consternation into which the opposite party were thrown at the first news of Mackay's defeat. "The Duke ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... not exaggerating. The guests at Worsted Skeynes on the night of the Rutlandshire Handicap were nearly all county people, from the Hon. Gertrude Winlow, revolving like a faintly coloured statue, to young Tharp, with his clean face and his fair bullety head, who danced as though he were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... penalised Ireland still further by exaggerating those methods of Whig finance which persistently narrowed the basis of indirect taxation and heaped up disproportionate imposts on a few selected articles—articles which are either very largely produced or very largely consumed in Ireland. The effect ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... movement and gesture, is as much in advance of his age, as is his modern and natural visualisation, and the impressionistic breadth of his brushwork. In that respect, indeed, it is impossible to go farther. Later painters have erred as much in exaggerating violent action and over-developing muscles, as the earlier master fell short in dry and laborious stiffness. Signorelli, while retaining the earnest sincerity and thoughtfulness of the earlier workers, has been able at the same time to render with modern facility ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... joggled in a little trot with much switching of a ragged tail; its rider wore a curious peaked cap and sat straight and lean in the saddle. Over one shoulder rested a long bamboo pole that in the exaggerating sunlight cast a shadow like the shadow of a lance. The man on the donkey was shaped like a dumpling and rode with ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... largest in the room, and the most plentifully besmeared with colours, and woe to the girl who ventured too near it! As Madge stood before her easel, tall and fair and earnest, painting with an ardour and concentration which was all too sure to beguile her into her besetting sin of "exaggerating details," she wielded both brush- and palette-arm with a genial disregard of consequences. Nor could one count upon her confining her activities to one location. Like all the students, she was in the habit of backing away from her ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... made it their business to create a public opinion against him. They assailed him at all points with ridicule, with satire, with vituperation, and with personal abuse. They seemed to lie in wait to find occasion for attacking him, exaggerating his weaknesses and minimising his strength. But the blunder that broke his heart, and sent him into unexpected and sudden retirement, was his opposition to a change in the law providing for the choice of presidential electors by the people. The demand for such a measure grew out of a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... kind of savage delight in seeing Daniel's despair, and in explaining to him most minutely how solidly, and how skilfully Miss Sarah Brandon's position in the world had been established. Had he any expectation to prevent a struggle with her by exaggerating her strength? Or rather, knowing Daniel as he did,—far better, unfortunately, than he was known by him,—was he trying to irritate him more and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... was excited to a still further degree when any mention was made of treason or sedition; and the bloodthirsty insinuations of those around him, exaggerating everything that happened, and pretending great concern at any danger which might threaten the life of the emperor, on whose safety, as on a thread, they hypocritically exclaimed the whole world depended, added daily to his suspicions ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... a superior enemy, that this country might be snatched from England and saved to France."[679] What Boishebert was doing in Acadia, Vaudreuil was doing on a larger scale in Canada. By indefatigable lying, by exaggerating every success and covering over every reverse, he deceived the people and in some measure himself. He had in abundance the Canadian gift of gasconade, and boasted to the Colonial Minister that one of his countrymen was a match for from three ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... be mentioned in the same day, and that she felt quite discouraged from writing when she thought of yours. The whole conversation of the aunties [3] made her screech with laughing; and, in short, I can neither record nor describe all that she said; far from exaggerating it, I don't say half enough, but I only wish you had seen the effect it produced. I am sure you will be the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... carpenter having been duly set to work on the repairs, and being inspected in that serious piece of prosaic business by the second mate, our captain was set free to charm the very souls of the juveniles by wandering for miles along the coral strand inventing, narrating, exaggerating to his heart's content. Pausing now and then to ask questions irrelevant to the story in hand, like a wily actor, for the purpose of intensifying the desire for more, he would mount a block of coral, and thence, sometimes as from a throne, or platform, or pulpit, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... was natural enough under the circumstances, but he had no idea of the cause of it. The cause of it was sitting under the chestnut-tree, the bright sunlight, streaming through a break in the branches above, illuminating and emphasizing and exaggerating his extreme shabbiness. The doctor had never seen Asaph, and it would have been a great shock to Marietta's self-respect to have him see her brother in ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... unutterable grief to announce to you and your worthy uncle the irreparable loss I have sustained in the death of my only son. It is a month to day since he departed this life. He died, sir, as a Christian should die—humbly, penitently—exaggerating the few faults of his short life, but—(and here the writer's hypocrisy, though so natural to him—was it, that he knew not that he was hypocritical?— fairly gave way before the real and human anguish, for which there ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... toward exaggerating the importance of drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong, and if girls, as a class, should be required to spend any large proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology of feminine implements and tasks ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... women the slaves of dismal duties, we have deprived marriage of its charm for men. Can we wonder that the gloomy silence they find at home drives them elsewhere, or inspires little desire to enter a state which offers so few attractions? Christianity, by exaggerating every duty, has made our duties impracticable and useless; by forbidding singing, dancing, and amusements of every kind, it renders women sulky, fault-finding, and intolerable at home. There is no religion which imposes ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... nearly a hundred thousand crowns in gold in the house. The department of the Charente had valued old Sechard's money at a million; rumor, as usual, exaggerating the amount of a hoard. Eve and David had barely thirty thousand francs of income when they added their little fortune to the inheritance; they waited awhile, and so it fell out that they invested their capital in Government securities ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... disposed to make light of the duty committed to him; whether from a professional habit of exaggerating the importance of any mission undertaken by him, or in perfect singleness of mind, it ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... both, however, party feeling had more influence than the good or bad qualities of either. The factious tribunes,[202] too, inflamed the populace, charging Metellus, in their harangues, with offenses worthy of death, and exaggerating the excellent qualities of Marius. At length the people were so excited that all the artisans and rustics, whose whole subsistence and credit depended on their labor, quitting their several employments, attended Marius in crowds, and thought less of their own wants ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... not exaggerating a bit—If it didn't begin to rain! Now, of course, rain couldn't hurt Alice any, for she was a duck and was used to the water, but she knew it would spoil her new bonnet. So she took it off and laid it under a ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... specific phenomena, without regard to others perhaps, and without necessarily paying attention to exact proportions of distances and dimensions. Indeed, it is often the case that the illustration is made clearer by exaggerating some of these and reducing others; thus, for example, the causes of the variation in the lengths of the days and nights, and of the changes in the seasons, can be exhibited to much better advantage by an apparatus in which the diameter of the sun and its distance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... incessantly to counteract and rival the naval power of England. Everything Russian was popular in France after the capture of southern Sebastopol—everything English was decried. The most mendacious statements, under official authority, were put forth, exaggerating the losses of the English navy and army, and lessening the computation of the losses of Russia and France. The French official journals described the loss of the Russian army at a quarter of a million of men. Lord Panmure, in his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... walking, all the passing of the living, all the knowing of the living of the ones who are prospering, all the tender pressing of the complete expression, all the exaggerating in examination, all the actual decision, nothing is more than too much then, there is all of that waiting and there is that ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... "Oh, you're exaggerating," said Glibton; "there can't be such widespread misery. Why, if there were, the people would be ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... exaggerating, and people seem perfectly willing to pay for their experience, whether they acquire it over copper, lead or tin. Besides, there's an average commercial probability that somebody will find good ore after going down far ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... beautiful as she did at this moment, as she laid aside her pride for a moment, to plead for the unlucky letter. He would have given a good deal to have been able to gratify her. 'Miss Wharton,' he said, 'you really are exaggerating this matter, and, if you will excuse my speaking plainly, you are not very just or polite to myself in objecting to my receiving a friendly letter from your little sister. After all, I am not a cad or such an objectionable person that ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... left me no doubt. I watched him closely. He was for ever haunting those rooms which she had inhabited. When he found her miniature in the drawing-room he went first as white as death, then he took it in his hand and stood gazing at it (I am not exaggerating) for a whole hour without moving; and, finally, he carried it off, and I know he used to talk to it in his room. And now, even if I had not given my poor brother my word of honour never to disturb his chosen solitude, I should ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... reaching out to him, as though her whole slight body were an arrow winged with pleadings. It was a relief to speak at last, even face to face with the stony image that sat in her husband's place; and she told her story, detail by detail, omitting nothing, exaggerating nothing, speaking slowly, clearly, with precision, aware that the bare facts were ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... his opportunities well. He had caught the major's little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his pompous courtliness to perfection—exaggerating all to the purposes of the stage. When he performed that marvellous bow that the major fondly imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a sudden round of ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... suddenness that at first seem wholly unaccountable. The destructiveness of the lower portion of this particular flood was somewhat augmented by mining gravel in the river channels, and by levees which gave way after having at first restrained and held back the accumulating waters. These exaggerating conditions did not, however, greatly influence the general result, the main effect having been caused by the rare combination of flood factors indicated above. It is a pity that but few people meet and enjoy storms so noble as ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... perpetuates accidental social differences, exaggerating and making them hereditary; it thus defeats that just moiety of the democratic ideal which demands that all men should have equal opportunities. In human society chance only decides what education a man shall receive, what wealth and influence he shall enjoy, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... language is very literary, so his seemingly mad meaning is very historical. Modern people do not understand him because they do not understand the difference between exaggerating a truth and exaggerating a lie. He did exaggerate, but what he knew, not what he did not know. He only appears paradoxical because he upheld tradition against fashion. A paradox is a fantastic thing that is said once: a fashion ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge (hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... talking to a man who is a member of a traditionally reticent and unexpansive race; who says about one third of what he feels; who is obsessed by a mania for understating his country's case, exaggerating its weaknesses, and belittling its efforts; who is secretly shy, so covers up his shyness with a cloak of aggressiveness which is offensive to those who are not prepared for it. Remember that this attitude ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... an important fact remains: shorn as he was, McClellan was still strong enough to meet and to defeat his opponents. If he had been one of the great generals of the world he would have been in Richmond before May Day; but he was at his old trick of exaggerating the hostile forces and the difficulties in his way. On April 7 he thought that Johnston and the whole Confederate army were at Yorktown; whereas Johnston's advance division arrived there on the 10th; the other divisions came several ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... cannot go on exaggerating the injury—that is not Hotspur's line, is indeed utterly false to Hotspur's nature; and so he tries to stop himself and think ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... to add that the continental view prevailed, but Mr. Wilson imagined that, while abandoning his principles in favor of Britain, France, and Bulgaria, he could readjust the balance by applying them with rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with Greece. He afterward communicated his reasons for this belief in a message published in Washington.[299] The alliance—he was understood to have been opposed to all partial alliances on principle—which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... while not in the least exaggerating the actual situation, was well calculated to attract immigration to this region. It was written in a year of great activity in that line. Gold had been discovered in California, and the thoughts of the pioneer ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... for him, we two, lost and wandering in the storm, should have died from exposure and exhaustion—from some accident, perhaps. On the other hand I had indubitably saved his life, and he had already thanked me in high-flown language; very grave, but exaggerating the horrors of his danger, as a woman might have done for the better expression of gratitude. He had been greatly shocked. Spaniards, as a race, have never, for all their conquests, been on intimate ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... said I might not be able to get around much all summer," she ventured, exaggerating the words of the old doctor somewhat in her determination to get help at all costs that would leave ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... were her words to her companion,—"do not alarm yourself by exaggerating the difficulties; do not even contemplate them: those be my care. Mainwaring, when I loved you; when, seeing that your diffidence or your pride forbade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the modesty or the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, 'Forget that I am the reputed heiress ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did this, and would you believe me, for I'm not exaggerating the least bit, if that fairy carrot didn't roll right along on the ground ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... with caution. "But of course I was exaggerating. Ten thousand gold pounds would be too much, of ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... against exaggerating, a gentleman at a Washington banquet related the following anecdote of a Revolutionary veteran, who, having outlived nearly all his comrades, and being in no danger of contradiction, rehearsed his experience thuswise: "In that fearful day at Monmouth, although entitled to a horse, I fought ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... intended without reference to panic or exaggeration is to find out the exact truth and then tell it. There is nothing gained, be it to farmers or consumers, the Statistician adds, in suppressing truth on the one hand or exaggerating the losses on the other. One feature of corn-growing in 1883 should prove a lesson to the farmers of the country; that is, the general use of seed corn in the West, grown in lower latitudes. The planting of Nebraska seed in Minnesota ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... I, in a manner, studied her excellence. Never did I meet more intuitive rectitude of mind, more native delicacy, more exquisite propriety in word, thought, or action, than in this young creature. I am not exaggerating; what I say was acknowledged by all who knew her. Her brilliant little sister used to say that people began by admiring her, but ended by loving Matilda. For my part, I idolized her. I felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... exaggerating person!" exclaimed the little girl, as she prepared for her shopping excursion. She meant aggravating; but, like most people who attempt to use large words the meaning of which they do not understand, she made droll ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... an inward voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke these last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something at a distance from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole event—her own acts included—through an exaggerating medium of excitement and horror? Was she in a state of delirium into which there entered a sense of concealment and necessity for self-repression? Such thoughts glanced through Deronda as a sort of hope. But ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... quite impossible that he should go down to the House? Perhaps the doctor was exaggerating the situation. There was a Cabinet Council that day. He glanced at his watch. It must be nearly over by now. But at least he might perhaps venture to drive down as far as Westminster. He pushed back the little round table with its bristle of medicine-bottles, and levering ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jocose caricature of their adversaries. On the walls of the Pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the Pharaoh on his ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... it be alleged that the disturbances there are only a reaction from the disturbances here, we must say that that point is not clear, and Brother Jonathan may be exaggerating his commercial importance. The ties of all the maritime nations are growing more and more intimate every year, and the trouble of one is getting to be more and more the trouble of the others in consequence; but as yet any unsettled balance of American trade, compared with the whole trade of those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... it, but she told me it was very nice to be different from other people, and dressed me in crisp yellow linen or pale blue, which made me look still darker, on the principle that Sarah Bernhardt followed in exaggerating her thinness when it was the fashion to have a rounded form. My mother told me to consider my dark skin a beauty, for she believed that if children had a good opinion of themselves they would ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... I've said already that it was horrid; but it was not so horrid as you think. Trix is my sister, and we all have a habit of exaggerating and using stronger terms than we really mean. We have a habit of giving nicknames, too. They are not complimentary as a rule, but we don't mean to be unkind. If you read some of Trix's other letters, you would see that we have not been altogether ungrateful. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a noise in the hall. Come, Maria; mind, you must not tell anybody. Bertha, come,' expostulated Phoebe, trying to drag her sister to the red baize door; but Bertha stood, bending nearly double, exaggerating the helplessness of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Armine, you are exaggerating. I wish nothing of that kind. All I wish is to be allowed to use such medical talent as God has given me in the service of your husband ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have frequently spoken lately of "cultures" of tissues detached from the organism to which they belonged; and some of them, exaggerating the results already obtained, have stated that it is now possible to make living tissues grow and increase when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of that, my dear lady, in the way of mystery and romance? Is our harmless Stout Friend as interesting now as if he rejoiced in the terrible popular fame of the Arsenic and the Strychnine which I keep locked up there? Don't suppose I am exaggerating! Don't suppose I'm inventing a story to put you off with, as the children say. Ask Benjamin there," said the doctor, appealing to his assistant, with his eyes fixed on Miss Gwilt. "Ask Benjamin," he repeated, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... They had never been married (so the illusion suggested). There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house, at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... tours, they sang—and sang very ill—and had a pair of red ears when, as described above, the inauspicious peasant plumped into their arms from round a corner. And here, lest you should think I am exaggerating, is Hazlitt's own confession, from his essay "On Going a Journey," which is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who have not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shoulders. Some of Li Hung Chang's men, seeing them too, rushed up, rolling their sleeves high and flourishing swords. Here, thought they, was an excellent opportunity to gain favour with their master by cutting off some rebel heads and exaggerating the exploit into a severe fight. But the I.G. immediately stepped between, showed his revolver, and threatened to shoot the first man who stirred a step nearer to the boys. "Are you not ashamed to fight with children?" said he, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... all this general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand—nothing extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence' which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness' which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems gradually going and going—and really it would ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... nevertheless, no necessity for exaggerating those faults with the persistency met with in the Annals. Scandal without contradiction is admitted of all persons who are either thought good or who act properly. Every infamous slander is accepted that is cast on the eminent statesman and philosopher, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... failing extends to those about him, to his heads of services. These men live well, sleep well; the same must be true of all! They have picked, well-conditioned horses; the roads are excellent! They are never sick; the doctors must be exaggerating sickness! They have attendants and doctors; everybody must be well looked after! Something happens which shows abominable negligence, common enough in war. With a good heart and a full belly they say, "But this is infamous, ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... afraid; aunt Bertha sat motionless upon her chair, and although I felt that her eyes were upon me I was not reassured. The very chairs, the chairs ranged about the room, began to disquiet me because their long shadows, that stretched behind them exaggerating the height of ceiling and length of wall, moved restlessly like souls in the agonies of death. And especially there was a half-open door that led into a very dark hall, which in its turn opened into a large empty parlor absolutely dark. Oh! with what intensity I fixed my eyes upon that ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... it has already been as merry as it has lain within my poor capacity to make it. Let me, however, express my own gratitude to you for this delightful occasion. You have referred to the fare as meagre, to our position as constrained, but believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say that I so little agree with you that I am confident that, during many of the remaining years of my life I shall look back to this Christmas as one of unusual luxury and freedom. It is, perhaps, the warm glow of friendship that gilds all small discomforts, for in situations like ours ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... in the secluded retreat to which he had been, sent, he would persist in hanging about in the immediate neighborhood of Boonesborough, and appeared to have spoken freely about our projects, greatly exalting and exaggerating their importance; indeed, he could scarcely have said more if we had been traveling as accredited agents between two belligerent powers. Such vainglorious garrulity was not only intensely provoking, but involved real peril to all parties concerned. I thought the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... plan of the city we are thus of necessity thrown back upon the reports of ancient authors. It is not pretended that such reports are in this, or in any other case, deserving of implicit credence. The ancient historians, even the more trustworthy of them, are in the habit of exaggerating in their numbers; and on such subjects as measurements they were apt to take on trust the declarations of their native guides, who would be sure to make over-statements. Still in this instance we have so many distinct authorities—eyewitnesses of the facts—and some of them ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... books and of hearsay. I declare to you, gentlemen, that I have often expected to be told, when I have been asked a question about the circulation of the blood, that Professor Breitkopf is of opinion that it circulates, but that the whole thing is an open question. I assure you that I am hardly exaggerating the state of mind on matters of fundamental importance which I have found over and over again to obtain, among gentlemen coming up to that picked examination of the University of London. Now, I do not think that is a desirable state of things. I cannot understand ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... doubt, in many cases false, and in other cases exaggerated; still the results possess a permanent interest. He may be said to have worked out many of the most important physical or mechanical properties of a soil, although exaggerating the importance of the influence of these properties on ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... I propose to substitute for the traditional Fielding a quite different person, of regular habits and methodical economy. Certainly not. The traditional estimate of great men is rarely wrong altogether, but it constantly has a habit of exaggerating and dramatising their characteristics. For some things in Fielding's career we have positive evidence of document, and evidence hardly less certain of probability. Although I believe the best judges are now of opinion that his impecuniosity has been overcharged, he certainly had experiences ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... in Germany thought as little of it as Napoleon; the Empire of my countrymen was founded on a proper appreciation of the infinitesimal value of human life, and your British Empire will be lost through exaggerating its importance. Blood and Iron were our our watchwords; they're on the tip of every Fleet Street pen to-day, but I speak of what I know. I've heard the Iron shriek without ceasing, like the wind, and I've felt the Blood like spray ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... his spiritual dependence upon Wagner, and in his Tone-Poems, upon Liszt and Berlioz, he has a very definite musical personality. He has amplified, intensified the Liszt-Wagner music, adding to its stature, also exaggerating it on the purely sensuous side. That he can do what no other composer has done is proved by the score of his latest opera Ariadne at Naxos, given for the first time in Stuttgart. Here, with only thirty-six in the orchestra, a grand pianoforte ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... exaggerating," said Tavia apologetically, "but I am so accustomed to tell things as big as I can make them. Brother Johnnie won't listen ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... successors, there had been many enactments to improve the condition of the slave. The ergastula were abolished. But no system of free labour had as yet succeeded. A whole mendicant population, artfully exaggerating every symptom and circumstance of misery, still hung [163] around, or sheltered themselves within, the vast walls of their old, half-ruined task-houses. And for the most part they had been variously stricken by the pestilence. For once, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... more closely at the ornament. The man was probably not exaggerating too much. Actually, he knew he could get an easy twenty-five balata for the bauble in Karth. A rapid calculation told him that here was a possible profit ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... connected with Government, and part of it under you, feel a degradation in the first Minister of the Country being selected from [sic] a Person of the description of Mr. Addington without the slightest pretensions to justify it, and destitute of abilities to carry it on. Depend upon it I am not exaggerating the state of the case; and a very short experience will prove that I am right; and the Speaker will ere long feel that he has fallen from a most exalted situation and character into one of a very opposite description. Save him from it if not too late. Yourself excluded from it, I am afraid ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... people who, in their wonderful wisdom, will doubtless shake their heads and smile incredulously at what I am about to say, but possibly there may be among my more widely travelled readers one or two who will know, from experience, that I am not exaggerating when I say that the body of the creature—of a deep ruby colour—was as big as the head of an average- sized man! Its head was about the size of an orange; it had a pair of wicked-looking eyes that fairly blazed with fury as, catching sight of me, it suddenly halted, glaring at me, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... religion, which, in comparison with the complicated and obscure ratiocinations of Boodhism, are clear as water, and lucid as atmospheric air? In other connections, this theorist does not speak in this style. In other connections, and for the purpose of exaggerating natural religion and disparaging revealed, he enlarges upon the dignity of man, of every man, and eulogizes the power of reason which so exalts him in the scale of being. With Hamlet, he dilates in proud ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Washington, we must write, upon the Catalogue of American Patriots, the name of Benjamin Franklin. He had so many virtues that there is no need of exaggerating them; so few imperfections that they need not be concealed. The writer has endeavored to give a perfectly accurate view of his character, and of that great struggle, in which he took so conspicuous a part, which secured the Independence of the United ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... returned to our rooms that night she remarked quite quietly: "But he did come, Emmie! When you said that at table d'hote about my exaggerating things, I let it pass, because very often it is true. But what I said this evening was absolutely correct, though perhaps it is as well those people should not believe it. Someone did come to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... then related to his father how he had been awaked, exaggerating the beauty and charms of the lady he found by his side, the instantaneous love he conceived for her, and the pains he took to awaken her without effect. Shewing the king the ring he had taken from her finger he added, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little further. It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour's sufferings, in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words, accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions. This may indeed convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the feeling itself. The right word will at once generate a sympathy of which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... that frisky body in the frilled sark?" said Miss Aline, who, like many of her countryfolk of the time, regularly honoured her country by exaggerating its accent and speech in ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... fashionable literature, he turned to private and humble life as possessing at least a reality. But he thus withheld himself from the contemplation of those great mental excitements which only great public struggles can awaken. He contracted a habit of exaggerating the importance of every-day incidents and emotions. He accustomed himself to see in men and in social relations only what he was predetermined to see there, and to impute to them a value and importance derived mainly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... had never encountered it in their fjords, nicknamed it the kraken, exaggerating its proportions and even converting it into a fabulous being. If it came to the surface, they confounded it with an island; if it remained between the two waters, the captains, on making their soundings, became confused in their calculations, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... politics and social science, as though under the impression that she could not write except to advance some theory of which they disapproved, pre-supposed in these stories a set purpose of exalting the excellence of rustic as compared with polite life—of exaggerating the virtues of the poor, to throw into relief the vices of the rich. The romances themselves do not bear out such a supposition. In them the author chooses exactly the same virtues to exalt, the same vices to condemn, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... these things to his companions, and, without exaggerating the state of things, he told them all the pros and cons. After all they could not prevent it. It did not appear likely that Granite House would be threatened unless the ground was shaken by an earthquake. But the corral would be in great ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... "You are exaggerating altogether," Cyril said; "and yet, in what you say about my age, I think you are partly right. I have lived most of my life alone; I have had much care always on my shoulders, and grave responsibility; thus it is that I am older in many ways than I should ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... represents an honorable profession. I have known him personally for a number of years and I'll vouch for him. He was sent here by his city editor to cover our reunion. That he comes here at such an unfortunate time is a coincidence. We may speak to him frankly. We are perhaps exaggerating and magnifying what is at worst only a normal thing in the lives of old men. We have all lived our lives and death is—" He paused and at several nods from members of the group he turned ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... sitting over a glass of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... at him, surprised. He had not expected an adventure of this kind on a Canadian Pacific train, but did not think the other was exaggerating. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... expense a people who cannot or will not aid in defending themselves. I hope that General Saxton has not held out too grand hopes of the success of this undertaking to the President and to others at the North, and I hope he is exaggerating the importance of the movement. Perhaps the President wants to try his colonization scheme on these people. He had better lose a campaign than evacuate these islands and give up this experiment. This experiment ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... but no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... peculiarly recommended them to the trading classes; whilst the friends of "progress" dilated on the great benefits they would eventually confer upon mankind at large. It began to be seen that Edward Pease had not been exaggerating when he said, "Let the country but make the railroads, and the railroads will make the country!" They also came to be regarded as inviting objects of investment to the thrifty, and a safe outlet for the accumulations of inert men of capital. Thus new avenues of iron road ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... thought that my friend must be exaggerating. Not lightly was I prepared to let my dream go. But I am afraid that my confidence in America as the home of freedom needs a tonic. She may have been right, although it seems unbelievable. When I thought the problem ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... circus with which Joe traveled did good business. And it is not exaggerating to say that a good deal of it was due to Joe's fame. For his rescue of the diver had been heralded over all the country, and particularly in the section where the ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... know no case that can make light my load, * Or heal my wasting body or cast out from me this bane. A hell of fire is in my heart upflames with lambent tongue * And Laza's furnace-fires within my liver place have ta'en. O thou, exaggerating blame for what befel, enough * I bear with patience whatsoe'er hath writ for me the Pen! I swear, by Allah, ne'er to find aught comfort for their loss; * "Tis oath of passion's children and their oaths are ne'er in vain. O Night! Salams of me to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of Scipio's being afflicted with a severe fit of illness, which rumour represented as more serious than it really was; for every one made some addition to the account he had received, from a desire inherent in mankind of intentionally exaggerating reports, the whole province, and more especially the distant parts of it, were thrown into a state of ferment; and it was evident what a serious disturbance would have been excited had he really died, when an unfounded report created such ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... least of all to be feared that an enemy, vanquished and almost besieged in their camp, should entertain thoughts of depredation: and the peasants, rushing through the gates in a state of panic, cried out that it was not a mere raid, nor small parties of plunderers, but, exaggerating everything in their groundless fear, whole armies and legions of the enemy that were close at hand, and that they were hastening toward the city in hostile array. Those who were nearest carried to others the reports heard from these, reports vague and on that account more groundless: and the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no doubt, my dear. The Harpoon is a good ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... be imparted be sane, honest and truthful, without exaggerating the evils and without laying undue emphasis on the dark shadows of our sex life, then the results can be only beneficent. And the task I have put before myself in this book is to give our girls and women sane, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... received the figures for the current year, from the best authority in Washington, the preacher was able to say that his statements of last Sunday had been below reality, and that, instead of exaggerating, he had underestimated the facts. This gave Mr. Coffin, as he afterwards confessed, fresh impetus in his determination to get grade crossings abolished ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... forefront of his Logic, that, in the Scottish philosopher's words, "it is to the schoolmen that the vulgar languages are indebted for what precision and analytical subtlety they possess;" and that, as the Frenchman, going still further, but hardly exaggerating, lays it down, "logic, ethics, and metaphysics itself owe to Scholasticism a precision unknown to the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... pages, will melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that Chaucer was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who pandered to a base and licentious appetite by painting and exaggerating the lowest vices of his time. In these selections — made without a thought of taking only what is to the poet's credit from a wide range of poems in which hardly a word is to his discredit — we behold Chaucer ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... also the buffoon, who takes pleasure in avowing, and even exaggerating, his own sensuality and want of principle, and who jokes at the expense of the other characters, and occasionally even addresses the pit. This is the origin of the comic servants of the moderns, but I am inclined to doubt whether, with our manners, there is propriety and truth in introducing ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... all the first society of Rome. She had not taken time to reflect, and had walked so fast, that when she reached the chamber, she could not breathe, or utter a single word. Lord Nelville conceived all that she had risked to come and see him, and exaggerating the consequences of this action, which in England would have entirely ruined the reputation of an unmarried woman, he felt penetrated with generosity, love, and gratitude, and rising up, feeble as he was, he pressed Corinne ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... crossed with that of the white variety; and so it is when differently coloured species are crossed. The general results may be seen in the Table at the {106} end of his volume. In one instance he gives[228] the following details; but I must premise that Gaertner, to avoid exaggerating the degree of sterility in his crosses, always compares the maximum number obtained from a cross with the average number naturally given by the pure mother-plant. The white-variety of V. lychnitis, naturally fertilised by its own pollen, gave from an average of twelve capsules ninety-six ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... want to humble you," Margaret said. "I only thought, and I do still think, that you are exaggerating the change in your appearance. One sees every little thing about oneself so clearly. I know how a wee spot seems like a Vesuvius when it is on one's nose. With smallpox the marks do get ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... right," he said. "You're exaggerating all this. Maggie wouldn't hurt a fly—indeed, she wouldn't. She has her faults, perhaps, but cruelty isn't one of them. You must remember that she's had a bad time lately losing her aunt and then ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... contempt, as a creature unworthy to bear the family name, or share the family honors; until at length the child herself began to look upon her fault in the light her father wished her to see it, and with such exaggerating eyes, withal, that she came to think of herself as a dishonored criminal, unworthy even to live. Her grief sank to horror, and her depression ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Mushaf (a copy of the Koran), and has hinted at writing out a chapter for me to wear as a hegab (an amulet for my health). He is interested in the antiquities and in M. de Rouge's work, and is quite up to the connection between Ancient Egypt and the books of Moses, exaggerating the importance ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Christianity. Starting from an avowedly pantheistic view of philosophy, the author of it gradually passed through the sciences, until he arrived at man, and reached the study of human history and constitutions. Exaggerating the good elements of human nature, and ignoring the necessity for any other than a social power to amend the heart, he traced the source of evil to social competition, and proposed to rearrange society on the principle of substituting co-partnership for competition.(873) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was consumed with the pain of his struggle to comprehend more beauty. Even exaggerating his hunger for sight, she wept beside him. Her whole soul yearned to help him, to give him more of the beauty which seemed the prime need of ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that practically the average orthodox believer believes in a duality, and not a Trinity, in the divine nature. I do not care about the scholastic words, but what I would insist upon is that the course of Christian thinking has been roughly this. First of all, in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the end and looked up, and there was my home about me, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter things upon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came to me from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And Rachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a young mother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems of reality was amazing. It was as though I had ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and hysterical. That Queen Victoria was a model of political unselfishness is well known; it is less often remarked that few modern people have an unselfishness so completely free from morbidity, so fully capable of deciding a moral question without exaggerating its importance. No eminent person of our time has been so utterly devoid of that disease of self-assertion which is often rampant among the unselfish. She had one most rare and valuable faculty, the ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Zoologique' in 1832, I was altogether opposed to the doctrine that the animals and plants now living were the lineal descendants of distinct species, only known to us in a fossil state, and ... so far from exaggerating, I did not do justice to the arguments originally adduced by Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, especially those founded on the occurrence of rudimentary organs. There is therefore no room for suspicion that my account of the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... slow sigh that was almost a sob, and wondered, dully, whether sleep would come to her before morning. Certainly not until she had considered her position dispassionately,—neither ignoring its terrible possibilities, nor exaggerating her own sense of shame and disgrace,—and had settled, once for all, what honour and duty demanded of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the Coelian. Julia may be right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more serious troubles in Palmyra. She is full of deepest interest in the affairs of the Christians, and by many families of the poorer sort is resorted ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware |
