"Exaggerating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a part of youthful exuberance to exaggerate. Children always want a thing as long as "from here to Jerusalem," and stretch their tiny arms out till they nearly fall backwards, trying to make an inch as long as a mile. But, cave canem! the fault of exaggerating once powerful over you, not only the bounds of the English language are leapt, but truth is unconsciously set at nought. We always allow for the words of some persons, for with them a scratch is a wound; a wind, a hurricane; one dollar, a thousand; and all they do in life, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... works. Before a perusal of these hundred 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 as he was; a courtier, a gallant, pure-hearted ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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 such strict duties upon married life, and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... chamois-gloved, walking-sticked Fifth Avenue person with EYES! Of course, I knew. But the other girls didn't. They just sort of fell back at his approach, smitten. He didn't even raise an eyebrow to do it. Now, Emma, I'm not exaggerating. I know what effect he had on me and my girls, and, for that matter, every other man or woman in the store. Why, he was a dream realized to most of 'em. These shrewd, clever buyer-girls know plenty of men—business men of the slap-bang, horn-blowing, bluff, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... and drums beaten rapidly he danced, whirling round and round upon a mat until weak and dizzy, so that he had to lean on a post. For a time he appeared to be in a trance. After resting a few minutes he stalked majestically around the edge of the mat, exaggerating the lifting and placing of his feet and putting on an arrogant manner. After walking a minute or two he picked up a red handkerchief, doubled it in his hand so that the middle of the kerchief projected in a bunch above his ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... no need of it, Johnson; but without exaggerating, it can't be denied that training produces good effects; it strengthens the bones, makes the muscles more elastic, improves the hearing and the sight; so let ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... buildings, as above suggested, promises, however, the evolution of a style in which the historic origin of the details will be a secondary matter. Certain Chicago architects have developed an original treatment of architectural forms by exaggerating some of the structural lines, by suppressing the mouldings and more familiar historic forms, and by the free use of flat surface ornament. The Schiller, Auditorium, and Fisher Buildings, all at Chicago, Guaranty Building, Buffalo, and Majestic Building, Detroit, are examples of this personal ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... "you're right. It is original. It is even a more unholy, indescribable mystery than I expected, and I never accused you of exaggerating it, even in ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... exalted esteem. Moreover, Mr. Combe wrote a letter to Lucretia Mott (the celebrated Quakeress, who is a good friend of mine), when he heard that she had made my acquaintance, cautioning her against falling into the mistake which all my American friends committed, of "exaggerating my reasoning powers." This was all well and good, and only amused me as rather funny; some of my American friends being tolerably shrewd folk, and upon the whole, no bad judges of brains. But then the next thing that happens is, that I see the Combes myself for a short, hurried, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... said the Doctor, turning to him, after stepping to the bed and laying his hand upon Bracy's forehead; "the poor fellow is as weak as a babe, and could no more have done what you say than flown out of the window and across the valley. You are exaggerating, and—Oh, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... peoples, and has formed and forms an element in most religions. But it is not really pertinent to our present discussion to weigh the good and evil consequences of this belief. Without following the modern fashion, prevalent in some surprising quarters, of ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of false beliefs in past and present times, we may admit that the cause of morality in the humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been served by the religious condemnation of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the Reformation its enemies charged all the evils of fanaticism upon the very ones who were laboring most earnestly against it. A similar course was pursued by the opposers of the Advent Movement. And not content with misrepresenting and exaggerating the errors of extremists and fanatics, they circulated unfavorable reports that had not the slightest semblance of truth. These persons were actuated by prejudice and hatred. Their peace was disturbed by the proclamation of Christ at the door. They ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... social amelioration, and less as a religion, implied the same abnegation of 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 ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... applied them to architecture. Smile not, I pray, for you may see the one in the lamp multiplied for outline traceries, and the other in the fountain, the cascade, and the limpid margin at the base of walls. Or if still you think me exaggerating, is not the offence one to be lightly forgiven where the offender is telling of his birthplace? In one of the palaces of that Lake of Palaces I was born, the oldest son of the Rajah of Meywar, Oodeypoor his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Quadrigarius says forty thousand. The discrepancy does not ruffle him, nor even seem to him very important; he contents himself with an expression of mild surprise that Valerius for once allows himself to be outstripped in exaggerating numbers. Yet where Valerius is his only authority or is not contradicted by others, he accepts his statements, figures and all, without uneasiness. This instance is typical of his method as a critical—or rather an uncritical —historian. When his authorities do not disagree, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... and give their works a title. In them we find no beating about the bush, no circumlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene. His principal personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, "Look at me!" The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet. The ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... new Laws of the Spiritual World—those Laws, that is, which are found for the first time in the Spiritual World, and have no analogies lower down—there is this to be said, that there is one strong reason against exaggerating either their number or importance—their importance at least for our immediate needs. The connection between language and the Law of Continuity has been referred to incidentally already. It is clear that we can only ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... were much amused by putting into the hands of these Indians a magnifying mirror. On beholding themselves in it, their grimaces were highly entertaining. They first looked into, and then behind it, in hopes of finding the monster which was exaggerating their hideous gestures. A watch was held to the ear of one of them; and he, supposing it alive, asked if it was good to eat. On being shown the glass of the skylight and binnacle, they touched it, and desired to know what kind of ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... "Oh, you're exaggerating," said Glibton; "there can't be such widespread misery. Why, if there were, the people ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... be a true description of Virtue which makes it all-sufficient to itself, that alone a just portraiture of its excellence which does not lessen its internal power by exaggerating its outward advantages, nor degrade its nobility by dwelling only on its rewards. The grandest moral of ancient lore has ever seemed to me that which the picture of Prometheus affords; in whom neither the shaking earth, nor the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... neither material rewards nor official recognition. All the prizes, all the scholarships and fellowships, go to other subjects, and mainly to the classics. Let any reader of Everyman stand up and say that I am exaggerating; I would only be too delighted to ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Melhuish laughed. "You are 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 enough, and your part would be easy. You take a moderate price as vendor, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... Alcaeus in mockery of Philip, exaggerating the number of the slain. However, being everywhere repeated, and by almost everybody, Titus was more nettled at it than Philip. The latter merely retorted upon Alcaeus with some elegiac ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to 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 not been parted from Mary for a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... got to show for it all?—the loss, the pain, the disappointment, the disillusion. But, come now, let us look the thing fairly and squarely in the face. Is not Despondency disposed to state her case somewhat too emphatically? Am I, or am I not, flatly exaggerating in this summary of losses? Would I have the little child-wife back again if I could? Can her loss after this lapse of well nigh two score years have left anything, at most, but a humanising tenderness in my memory? She is a pretty and engaging recollection, and has been ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Germans are an intelligent race; they are undoubtedly a cultivated race; they are a race of men who have been responsible for great ideas in this world. But this would mean the dominance of the worst elements among them. If you think I am exaggerating just you read for the moment extracts from the articles in the newspapers which are in the ascendency now in Germany about the settlement which they expect after this war. I am sorry to say I am stating nothing ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dreadful account, no doubt," said Mr Sudberry, "but you must remember that Lady Knownothing is given to exaggerating, and is therefore not to be depended on. Have you done with ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 to his heart, and cried:—"My ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... to him that the streak of smoke yonder was growing denser and denser. Or were his eyes merely exaggerating that which was occupying his thoughts? He stood still, gazing—then he began to run. A red light was striking upward against the cloud of smoke—touched a moment, and disappeared; and a fresh mass of smoke unrolled itself, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Spaniards report that they proceeded towards the west for a distance of three hundred uninterrupted leagues. Midway they discovered a large river called Maragnon, so large in fact that I suspect them of exaggerating; for when I asked them on their return from their voyage if this river was not more likely a sea separating two continents, they said that the water at its mouth was fresh, and that this quality increased the farther one mounted the river. It is dotted with islands and full of fish. They ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... become transfigured; a good work.' He took the best that any one could give Him, whether it was of outward possessions or of inward reverence, abject submission, and love and trust. He never said to any man, 'You are going over the score. You are exaggerating about Me. Stand up, for I also am a Man.' He did say once, 'Why callest thou Me good?' not because it was an incorrect attribution, but because it was a mere piece of conventional politeness. And in all other cases, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... think I'm exaggerating, sir, or that we were unmanly; but I assure you that one and all of us broke down under this disappointment, and cried as if we were a parcel of children. It was like the last straw, you know, ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "Judges on the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the old"* all alike read it and laughed over it. Dickens above everything is a humorist, and one of the chief features in his humor is caricature, that is exaggerating and distorting one feature or habit or characteristic of a man out of all likeness to nature. This often makes very good fun, but it takes away from the truth and realness of his characters. And yet no ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... opened from within before he could turn the handle, and a shrill voice, exaggerating those of the girls, showered welcomes with such rapidity, that Albinia was seated at the table, and had been helped to cold chicken, before she could look round, or make much answer to reiterations of 'so ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lavishes a scholar's diligence; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible hideous, and the voluptuous obscene; and these features become more prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Pompey. Caesar had already crossed the Rubicon, which was high treason, before his last proposal to compromise, and he was on his way to Rome. No one resisted him, for the people had but little interest in the success of either party. Pompey, exaggerating his popularity, thought he had only to stamp the ground, and an army would appear, and when he discovered that his rival was advancing on the Flaminican way, fled hastily from Rome with most of the senators, and went to Brundusium. Caesar ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... let out the landing-place, if I could make something out of it. The Faroese would be sure to give me something for the pot if I gave them a hand with launching and unloading. They could row most ways from there—I'm not exaggerating—they had to stay at home time and time again last summer, when it was easy for Snjolfur and me to put off. There's a world of difference between a deep-water landing-place and a shallow-water one—that's what Snjolfur ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... breathing, and breaking off of phrases. I have been especially successful with this in the Entfuehrung, introducing a tone of lament into the first aria, a heroic dignity into the second, through the coloratura passages. Without exaggerating petty details, the artist must exploit all the means of expression that he ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... eyes on hearing this. Were the men telling me the truth? I asked myself, or were they trying to interest me in the case by exaggerating ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... quite true that the cultivation of a rubbio of land costs 80 scudi, it is false that the earth only yields sevenfold on the seed sown. According to the admission of the farmers themselves—and they are notoriously not in the habit of exaggerating their profits—it yields thirteen-fold on the seed sown. Thirteen measures of corn are worth thirteen times ten scudi, or 130 scudi. Deduct 80, the cost of cultivation, and 50 remain. Multiply ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... and 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. Will you read them? I have ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... am in the least exaggerating in this narrative. God knows, what I have to recount is sufficiently extraordinary. I hastened homeward, my soul in a tumult. On a sudden, the labor of a lifetime was destroyed, the opinions and convictions of a lifetime ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... say what a fine-looking man he was, and her father emphatically pronounced him to be "a very good fellow." He was Irish by his mother's side, Scotch by his father's, but much more Irish than Scotch by predilection, and it was his mother tongue he spoke, exaggerating the accent slightly to heighten the effect of a tender speech or a good story. With the latter he kept Mr. Frayling well entertained, and Evadne he plied with the former ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... their sympathy and insight. It remained for Crabbe to show that in wretched fishing villages, in the lives of hardworking men and women, children, laborers, smugglers, paupers,—all sorts and conditions of common men,—there is abundant romantic without exaggerating or idealizing their vices ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... portion of the Liverpool railway, and during the construction of the first ten miles of that railway their guest was born. He would not enter into the details of his father's career, but he had often asked himself what was the secret of his success. He hoped he was not exaggerating his father's praise when he said that he believed his success was mainly due to his high and honest character; and if he might make one more reference to his father he would say this, that the motive which prompted him to extend his enterprise ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... her since their dispute the previous day. The mother's face lighted up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken reconciliation. "Yes, that is what I love him for," Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his chair. "He ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the extreme. Many of them originate in superstition; and altogether, in whatever the savage does, he sees but the immediate consequences of his acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and ulterior consequences— thus simply exaggerating a defect with which Bentham reproached civilized legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage obeys the prescriptions of the common law, however inconvenient they may be. He obeys them even more blindly than the civilized man obeys the prescriptions of the written law. His common law is his ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... brought to London concerning our invaders. Their landing was long unknown, but having now advanced within an hundred miles of London, the country people flying before them arrived in successive troops, each exaggerating the numbers, fury, and cruelty of the assailants. Tumult filled the before quiet streets—women and children deserted their homes, escaping they knew not whither—fathers, husbands, and sons, stood trembling, not for themselves, but for their loved ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... results he obtained were, no 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 ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... exaggerating. You never thought about that mistress stuff till just this minute! Matter of fact, you never have 'smirked and hoped for money.' But all the same, you may be right. You ought to run the household as a business. I'll figure out a definite plan tomorrow, and hereafter you'll be on a regular amount ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... claims become complicated 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 faculty of letting things ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... human monarch with his throne, his scepter, his ministering attendants. Here on earth the priests were those courtiers who knew the effectual way of reaching him, by whom we would best send up our prayers, through whom we would best look for our salvation. Nordau is not exaggerating when he says: "When we have studied the sacrificial rites, the incantations, prayers, hymns, and ceremonies of religion, we have as complete a picture of the relations between our ancestors and their chiefs as if we had seen them with our own ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... morals, and (c) the fighting was between the Catholic Faith, which was all in all to the men of his time, and Pagans? Obviously he would make all he could of the old and terrified legends of the time long before his birth, he would get more precise as his birth approached (though always gloomy and exaggerating the evil), and he would begin to tell us precise facts with regard to the time he could himself remember. Well, all we get from St. Gildas is the predatory incursions of pagan savages from Scotland and Ireland, ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause 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 their ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... use a little sense, Gordon. I dare say I am exaggerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty, devil-may-care way of yours, the men think you are looking for trouble—and you're likely to ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... won't say you're exaggerating, because I don't know enough about it: but, perhaps, as you're not well, you're only looking on one side, and there is another and a brighter to be ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... analyze its significance and realize it in a sensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is madness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at this instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating the frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning hell, have never been able and no man is able to do any thing like justice to its legitimate deductions. Edwards is right in declaring, "After we have said our utmost and thought ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fanatic. Then the father, quick-sighted, and roused to an almost angry activity by his appreciation of Catherine's danger, threw himself into the combat, and endeavoured to imbue the girl with his own comprehension of life's meaning, exaggerating all his theories in the endeavour to make them seem sufficiently vital and impressive. Catherine lived in the centre of this battle, which became continually more fierce, until she was eighteen. Then she fell in love with Mark Sirrett, married ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... but inwardly her mind was full of critical reactions. Was this what Mr. Marsham most admired, his ideal of what a woman should be? Was he exalting, exaggerating it a little, by way of antithesis to those old-fashioned surroundings, that unreal atmosphere, as he would call it, in which, for instance, he had found her—Diana—at Rapallo—under her father's influence and bringing ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with tinted arabesques that reflect every ray of the sun. Fountains and lawns and statues mingle their attractions. The effect is one of splendor and beauty. Jainism is conservative Hinduism, recurring to the ancestral worship of the Vedas, exaggerating its doctrine of the sanctity of animal life, repudiating its later licentious developments, and taking in Buddha, not as the supreme and sole teacher of religion, but as only one of its great saints ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... studious accuracy, the last rites of the dead as practised among an utterly lost people, and even then I thought how envious some antiquarian friends of my own at Cambridge would be if ever I found an opportunity of describing these wonderful remains to them. Probably they would say that I was exaggerating, notwithstanding that every page of this history must bear so much internal evidence of its truth that it would obviously have been quite impossible for me to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a horse. It was a grey sway-backed horse that 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 ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bed-room while the rest of his generation were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... 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 in ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... 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, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... The reader must bear in mind that when I made this analysis of the 'Philosophie 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 ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... jury," said she, "you know without my telling you that when my client, the plaintiff, Mrs. Stiles, comes here and says that she has suffered at the hands of the railway company damages to the amount of ten thousand dollars, she is not exaggerating her sufferings for the sake of enlisting your sympathy. It is not that she comes to you with feminine weakness, displaying her injuries, and, with feminine resentment, overstating them and their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... and yet again. All through the afternoon he could be overheard relating the wonder to any one who would listen, exaggerating the effect of his blow, inventing terrific details. Why, the heifer had just frothed at the mouth, and his eyes had rolled up—ah, sure, his eyes rolled up just like that—and the butcher had said his skull was all mashed in—just ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... together, and the world sits down at an assembly, or in a court of law, or a theatre, or a camp, or in any other popular resort, and there is a great uproar, and they praise some things which are being said or done, and blame other things, equally exaggerating both, shouting and clapping their hands, and the echo of the rocks and the place in which they are assembled redoubles the sound of the praise or blame—at such a time will not a young man's heart, as they say, leap within him? Will ...
— The Republic • Plato
... recorded, of course, the impressions of everything that had yet come to him in life. A severe shock, such as he had just sustained, was bound to throw these impressions into confusion and disorder, jumbling them up into new and strange combinations, obliterating some, and exaggerating others. Jimbo himself was helpless in the matter; he could exercise no control over their antics until the doctors had once again reduced them to order; he would have to wander, lost and lonely, through the comparative chaos of disproportioned visions, generally ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... "the sea is open now, and we are getting back into well-known tracks; aren't you exaggerating a ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... fanciers have exactly the same taste, and consequently no two, in choosing and carefully matching their birds, prefer or select exactly the same. As each man naturally admires his own birds, he goes on continually exaggerating by selection whatever slight peculiarities they may possess. This will more especially happen with fanciers living in different countries, who do not compare their stocks and aim at a common standard of perfection. Thus, when a mere strain has once been formed, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... of his Christmas annuals Charles Dickens delighted to portray the misanthropic grumbler who hated to see others enjoy themselves, and always laid himself out to be especially miserable at Christmas time, exaggerating the effects of the season by assuming a frozen aspect, and like an iceberg, chilling all around him; yet as the same iceberg when swept into the Gulf Stream finds the surrounding air and water by which it is enveloped will not admit its retaining its frigid isolation, it gradually melts and mixes ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... concealment, and advocacy that abounded in explanation and colour, but abstained from the substance of fact. Documents couched in the usual official language, being dragged into the forbidden light of day, were supposed to reveal dark mysteries. The secrecy of the debates had a bad effect in exaggerating reports and giving wide scope to fancy. Rome was not vividly interested in the discussions; but its cosmopolitan society was thronged with the several adherents of leading bishops, whose partiality compromised their dignity and envenomed their disputes. Everything that was said was repeated, inflated, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... eyes do not weep, the lips do not quiver. One whole side of the human soul, the noblest and highest, is wanting in their pictures. More: in their faithful reproduction of everything, even the ugly, and especially the ugly, they end by exaggerating even that, making defects into deformities and portraits into caricatures; they calumniate the national type; they give a burlesque and graceless aspect to the human countenance. In order to have the proper background for such figures, they are ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ideal or model of human life. We do not feel that in striving to imitate even his most spiritual qualities we shall become impractical or unnatural. We do not feel this in the case of most other holy men. They become examples of one virtue by exaggerating it. But Christ never did this. Lofty as the view of life was which he discloses in our text, sublime as was its spiritual consecration, it existed in him in harmony with the life which by its thoroughly human and practical features proves that we too, ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... again and managed to get Bedelia, the cook, on the 'phone. Bedelia was perfectly willing to tell all she knew, and she appeared to know a great deal. Johnny held the receiver to his ear until his elbow cramped, and said "uh-huh" once in a while, and wondered how much Bedelia was exaggerating the truth. As a matter of fact Bedelia was giving him a conservative history of the past three days and, indirectly, she was explaining the crowd in the ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... that Englishmen could do anything, and that he would show them. He explained that we were both very much more than admirable horsemen, and only minimised his own feats in the colonies by kindly exaggerating mine in America, and finally it was settled gravely that we were to be at liberty to kill ourselves and ruin the horses for a lump sum of two pounds ten, provided we found food and wine for the two men who were to be our guides. In the morning, at six o'clock, we set out in a heavy shower ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... with a 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 her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... bestowed, and still bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archbishop, and that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of success would have been mine. I have felt the goad of many impulses, I have hunted many ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... between the imaginary and the real, it seems that mechanical invention is outside the realm of the imagination. Moreover, it requires the constant intervention of calculation, of reasoning, and lastly, of a manual operation of supreme importance. We may say without exaggerating that the success of many mechanical creations depends on the skillful manipulation of materials. But this last moment, because it is decisive, should not make us forget its antecedents, especially the initial moment, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... and the emotion which it produces. Were its fronting precipices organs, with their mountainous columns and pilasters for organ-pipes, they might produce a de profundis worthy of the scene and of its sentiments, its inspiration. This is not bombast; so far from exaggerating it does not even attain to the subject; no words can so much as outline the effects of eighty leagues of mountain ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Talbot's wish that Warner should bring the picture to his house on the following Thursday, that Sir Joshua might inspect it. He added also, in terms the flattery of which his friendship could not resist exaggerating, Talbot's desire to become the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the uncertain guidance of three hunters, who had merely passed once through the country and might have forgotten the landmarks. Their apprehensions were aggravated by some of Lisa's followers, who, not being engaged in the expedition, took a mischievous pleasure in exaggerating its dangers. They painted in strong colors, to the poor Canadian voyageurs, the risk they would run of perishing with hunger and thirst; of being cut off by war-parties of the Sioux who scoured the plains; of having their horses ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... with the hearty and poorly concealed approval of Young's friends, 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 ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, that few maxims are to be taken without qualification. They seek sharpness of impression by excluding one side of the matter and exaggerating another, and most aphorisms are to be read as subject to all sorts of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... 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 place in the British ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... exaggerating Owen's attitude towards his marriage, was accepting as his last word a few irritable sentences wrung from him by fatigue and annoyance at having seen the corrected proofs destroyed in a fit of childish temper on the part of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to the matter of the intercepted despatch. What piqued the Princess most was, to find details in it exaggerating the authority of D'Aubigny, and a statement to the effect that it was generally believed that she had married him. On reading this passage the pride of the great lady was more outraged even than her modesty. Beside herself with rage and vexation, she wrote with her own hand upon ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... think it's fair for some girls to have so much, and others to have to scrimp and pinch, and then have nothing," cried Bea, exaggerating her woes, as is usual, when one is determined to think one's self the worst abused of all mortals. "I wonder if Olive is going, and how she ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... much force? We stand in danger of exaggerating these vociferous thoughts. This question of naturalness as opposed to artificiality is not immediately pertinent to our problem, nor is the matter of optimism and pessimism, nor the biologic idea of survival. We should have looked more to the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... meant to come to her help and who had used her as a catspaw, leaving her to bear all the brunt of the German assault in an unequal and heroic struggle. It was accompanied by a constant flow of war news exaggerating the German successes and suggesting that, even if they ever had the intention of delivering Belgium, the Allies would no longer be in a position to ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... confidence in the truth of your communication, however strange it may be," replied Lord Woodville; "I know your firmness of disposition too well, to suspect you could be made the object of imposition, and am aware that your honour and your friendship will equally deter you from exaggerating whatever you may ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... he did not want to be cured. The country-people, who observe carefully and shrewdly, were not taken in; they will tell you, almost to a man, that Cocoleu is bad, but not an idiot. That is the truth. He has found out, that, by exaggerating his imbecility, he could live without work; and he has done it. When he was taken in by Count Claudieuse, he was clever enough to show just so much intelligence as was necessary to make him endurable, without being compelled to do ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... seen a good deal; he had been abroad; he had already had experiences; he had had differences with his father about Calvinism and some other things; and yet just see how he applies the standard of his earlier knowledge and observation to England—and by doing so, cannot help exaggerating the outstanding differences, always with an almost provincial accent of unwavering conviction due to his early associations and knowledge. He cannot help paying an excessive tribute to the Calvinism he had formally rejected, in so far as, according to him, it goes to form character—even national ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... saying is. And Harry and I (his name was Harry) got to quarrelling about how things ought to be arranged—and that began it. Flowers! you wouldn't believe it, madam, the flowers he used to bring me. He'd stop at nothing. It was lilies-of-the-valley more than once, and I'm not exaggerating! Well, of course, we were going to be married and live over the shop, and it was all going to be just so, and I was to have the window to arrange... Oh, how I've done that window of a Saturday! Not really, of course, madam, just dreaming, as you might say. I've done ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... oscillations—that is, the political agitations which result from this struggle of labor against power—now lead to a depression of the central force, which compromises the very existence of society; now, exaggerating this same force beyond measure, give birth to despotism. Then, the privileges of command, the infinite joy which it gives to ambition and pride, making the unproductive functions an object of universal lust, a new leaven of discord penetrates society, which, divided already ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... think that I am exaggerating and magnifying the parish pulpit of Mansoul, take this out of the parish records for yourselves. 'And now,' you will read in one place, 'it was a day gloomy and dark, a day of clouds and thick darkness with Mansoul. Well, when the Sabbath-day was come he took for his text ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... probability Lucy knew nothing of Manisty's discovery of the weapon in Alice's hand. While she was helping the girl to bed, Lucy, in her dazed and shivering submission, was true to her natural soberness and reserve. Instead of exaggerating, she had minimised what had happened. Miss Alice Manisty had come to her room,—had behaved strangely,—and Lucy, running to summon assistance, had roused Mr. Manisty in the library. No doubt she might have managed ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... All over London and the provinces Woolridge's posters were displayed; flaunting yet insidious posters where a young man and a young woman with innocent, idiotic faces were seen gazing, fascinated, into Woolridge's windows. Woolridge's artist had a wild humor that gave the show away by exaggerating the innocence and idiocy of Woolridge's victims. It appealed to Ransome by the audacity with which it had defied Woolridge's to see its point. Woolridge's itself was a perpetual tempting and solicitation. Ranny wondered how in those ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... exaggerate the power of a mysterious emancipator whom they suddenly found coming to their aid, there was added the influence of sensational reports in the public press. The newspapers especially took delight in exaggerating the powers and strength of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... date correctly on the first day of a new year. We should probably read January 1, 1828. When he assures us in the poem: "Four times have I here seen the fields robbed of their treasure," he is not to be taken literally. Who will begrudge an exiled poet the delight of exaggerating his sufferings? ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... groaned out, exaggerating a real qualm, "What my mother would have said to such ignorance, prefaced by 'I bet!' from the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his ingenuity will be sure of applause: and this alacrity becomes much greater, if he acts upon the offensive; by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and the unfortunate propensity which mankind have to finding and exaggerating faults." Pref., Vindic. Nat. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... evident that Spenser, untaught by experience and flattered into exaggerating his importance by the solicitude and deference of doctors and nurses to a paying invalid, had restored to favor his ancient enemy—optimism, the certain destroyer of any man who does not shake it off. She went away, depressed and worried. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... distinguished man was no longer minister, but he had been minister for a long time, and had left a great name. Foreigners rarely know more than one English minister at a time, but they compensated for their ignorance of the aggregate body by even exaggerating the qualities of the individual with whom they are acquainted. Lord Roehampton had conducted the affairs of his country always in a courteous, but still in a somewhat haughty spirit. He was easy and obliging, and conciliatory in little matters, but where the credit, or honour, or large ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... very little reserve, and the teachers of it without any at all. Against us our adversaries appear to have set themselves to be as bitter as they can—not only beyond all truth, but beyond probability—exaggerating without mercy,' &c.[664] And nearly thirty years later he still makes the same complaint. 'You cannot but see,' he warns candidates for Holy Orders, 'in what a profane and corrupt age this stewardship is committed to you; how grievously ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Perhaps I am exaggerating matters, though the history of this week would make strange reading if published broadcast. Indeed I shall now urge on Mr. Forbes the advisability of sending the facts to the press. London would be stirred ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... for the honour of your acquaintance. I have in these verses attempted some faint sketch of your portrait in the unembellished simple manner of descriptive truth. Flattery I leave to your lovers whose exaggerating fancies may make them imagine you are still nearer perfection than you ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 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 of quotation I ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... striking lessons of needed modifications, consequent upon particular local factors, or upon developments in the material of war; but does any thoughtful military man doubt that imagination has been actively at work, exaggerating or distorting, hastily waiving aside permanent truth in favor of temporary prepossessions or accidental circumstance? It is at least equally likely that the naval world at the present time is hugging some fond delusions in the excessive size ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... let no opponent of the Bill be tempted to compliment his own foresight, by exaggerating the mischiefs and dangers that have sprung from it: let not time be wasted in profitless regrets; and let those party distinctions vanish to their very names that have separated men who, whatever course ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... lungs! What do you think 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, with the steadiest emphasis on the next ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... longed for independence more earnestly than he; few were less able to achieve it. His mother, having shielded him so many years from himself as well as from adverse influences from without, had formed the habit of surveillance. Exaggerating his weakness and dependence, his unfitness to compete with other men in active pursuits, she had almost ignored his manhood. The rest of the family naturally took their tone from her, regarding him as an invalid, and treating him as ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... symbolic elements, and as though he wished to call attention to the danger of reversing the correct proportions, for instance, by the symbolic obtaining the preponderance in tragedy, or pathos in the epopee, or to the danger of exaggerating these proportions, until there was too much tragic pathos, or too much epic symbolism. But a scientific definition of the expressions used was altogether lacking, and I had to devote a whole chapter to the examination of the meaning of the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... his way to Captain Colden now," he said, exaggerating a little for the sake of effect. "He'll be a great chief some day, and meanwhile he's the fastest runner ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his birth at Stratford-on-Avon was a little accident, and that he belongs to the world. They say this out of politeness, because what they really believe is that he belongs to Germany, and that as a matter of fact Byron is the only great poet England has ever had. I am not joking. I am not even exaggerating. This is the real opinion of the German man in the street, and it is taught in lessons in literature. An English girl went to one of the best-known teachers in Berlin for lessons in German, and found, as she found elsewhere, that the talk incessantly turned on the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical enclave; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 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 ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... if not at the moment of his death, was under sentence of excommunication from the Church. The writings of such a man, betraying as they did an almost complete unacquaintance with the Scriptures and exaggerating men's natural powers to the undervaluing or partial exclusion of Grace, exercised a baneful influence on a man of Luther's tastes and temperaments. Accepted by Luther as characteristic of Scholastic Theology, such writings prejudiced him against the entire system. Acting on the advice of the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... high pressure, exaggerating his expressions, heightening his humorous touches with punctuations of rather wild laughter. At last he came to a stop with a half suppressed "Ah!" and a long ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... joking!" protested the painter, enchanted by the success of his speech. "You all look as if you thought I was pulling your legs, that it was just a trick. I'll take you to see the show, and then you can say whether I've been exaggerating; I'll bet you anything you like, you'll come away more 'up in the air' than ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... West Virginia. Jackson at once seized the chance of smashing Milroy by railing in to Staunton before Banks or Fremont could interfere. This would have been suicidal against a great commander with a well-trained force. But Banks, grossly exaggerating Jackson's numbers, was already marching north to the railhead at New Market, where he would be nearer his friends if Jackson swooped down. Detraining at Staunton the Confederates picketed the whole neighborhood ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... minnit," he said to Mr. Linderman, and he was not exaggerating greatly as to the time required to bring the gentlemen to him. "Know Mr. Linderman—Crane and Keith?" said Scattergood. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... are indispensable in a narrative, and the habit of exaggerating destroys the power of accurate observation and recollection which would render the story truly interesting. If, instead of trying to embellish her account with the fruits of her imagination, a young lady possessed the power of seizing upon the points best worth describing, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... then 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 from his own self-will. Even his natural good taste contributed to confirm him ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... exaggerating this wild and amazing prodigality of nature. The best-conducted hives will, as a rule, contain four to five hundred males. Weaker or degenerate ones will often have as many as four or five thousand; for the more a hive inclines to its ruin, the more males will it produce. It may be said that, on ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... formal observers of those decorums by which devotion proclaims itself to the world. They had received me not only with kindness but with marked respect. They chose to exalt into the noblest self-sacrifice the act of my leaving M. Selby's house. Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to it in the priest's letter, they represented me as quitting a luxurious home and an idolising husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the enemy of my religion. This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its fumes. I recoiled from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... 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 ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... this wrath or whether the deity was conceived as acting in accordance with just ideas. The thought that would engage the entire attention of the penitent would be the appeasement of his god. To effect this, he would not stop short at exaggerating his own guilt. He would manifest a contrition of spirit that would not be the less sincere for being, perhaps, out of proportion to the character of his sin when judged ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... washing machines are only needed in large families where all the washing is got up at home. But, if ever so small or only an occasional wash is done, there is no exaggerating the comfort and advantage of a machine which washes, wrings, and mangles. So far from injuring linen, machines of the best kind wear it far less than rough hand labour, and with reasonable care it will be found ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... study a long letter quite coherently written to her mother a few days before we saw the young woman, and about the time when she first told her long story to the department manager. In the letter she spoke of the extraordinary opportunities she now had in this place of employment, exaggerating her salary to $14 a week. She stated she had already had a raise, and could get work for other members of her family at good salaries. She was about to start a bank account, and so on. But instead of making any remittances to her mother (such as she asserted at one time) she requested her parents ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... drolled the little junior, who delighted in exaggerating the brogue that tripped naturally off his Irish tongue. "Don't be after giving me away to the Chief and the Senior that believe me, by me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that was King of Tara, and owned ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... vast capabilities for "business" 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 ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... is suspended, leaving the mind often a prey to its own fancy. The slightest attack of an enemy may be foretold by the unbridled imagination exaggerating the mental picture into a monstrous shark or snake, when, indeed, a much less portentous sign was cast ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... absolute limpidity, as if it had become rarified, rarified unto emptiness. The mountains seemed to have advanced extraordinarily; the Pyrenees were crushing the village; the Spanish summits or the French summits were there, all equally near, as if pasted on one another, exaggerating their burned, brown colors, their intense and sombre, violet tints. Large clouds, which seemed as solid as terrestrial things, were displayed in the form of bows, veiling the sun, casting an obscurity which was like an eclipse. And here and there, through some rent, bordered with dazzling ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... down and sleep; but finding a directing-post he climbed it, and by the light of the stars deciphered enough to know his whereabouts. About twelve that Saturday night he reached Ongar, white as a sheet, and so tired he could hardly utter a word. I gave him a basin of bread and milk, and I am not exaggerating when I say I put him to bed. He fell at once asleep, and did not awake till ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... report of her receptions got noised abroad; and envious tongues were soon exaggerating the extravagance and luxury in which she lived, descending to such childish tittle-tattle as that she lit her fires with bank-notes, that the number of her guests was so great and so distinguished that, for lack of seats, the marshals of France had ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... 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 story—a terrible ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... had so lately been the brightest child of them all, there now lay that great gulf. 'Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.' That the little blackbird, as they used to call her, should have been on the verge of running away with her own husband was a half understood, amusing mystery discussed in exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a fleet laden with supplies for many months. They must proceed, in fact, as if they were founding a great city on a hostile soil. On no other condition, added Nicias, would he undertake the command. Nicias had intended, by exaggerating the difficulties of the undertaking, to damp the ardour of the Athenians; but to his utter dismay, these timid counsels were greeted with a great shout of applause. It was supposed that he had changed his opinion, and even the elder ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... plate 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. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... whether 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 ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... suggested by the events of his life has long been in direct opposition to the character impressed on his writings; and Macaulay, who gave to the popular opinion its most emphatic and sparkling expression, increased this difference by exaggerating the opposite elements of the human epigram, and ended in manufacturing the most brilliant monstrosity that ever bore the name of a person. Lord Campbell followed with a biography having all the appearance of conscientious research and judicial impartiality, but which was really nothing more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... asked Nellie, smiling in spite of herself, at the simplicity of Mabel, who, without any intention of exaggerating, proceeded to tell what John Jr. had said and done, magnifying every attention, until Nellie, blinded as she was by what his mother had said, was convinced that, at all events, he was not true to herself. To be sure, he had never told ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... principle, the most effective of any in preventing the formation of a governing class; in closing the way to public business, not only to the old noblesse, but to the aristocracy of the future; in continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators; in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
