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Exaggerate   /ɪgzˈædʒərˌeɪt/   Listen
Exaggerate

verb
(past & past part. exaggerated; pres. part. exaggerating)
1.
To enlarge beyond bounds or the truth.  Synonyms: amplify, hyperbolise, hyperbolize, magnify, overdraw, overstate.
2.
Do something to an excessive degree.  Synonym: overdo.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Exaggerate" Quotes from Famous Books



... your secretary will make an appointment for you to see a Miss Valerie French. This is my niece. She does not know we are friends. When she tells you her tale, you need make no allowance for hysteria. Believe every word she says. She will not exaggerate. And please remember this. It is most desirable that she should marry the man about whom she will consult you. But it is still more desirable that she should not marry ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... excepting the Stoics, whose opinion I think I have sufficiently defended; and indeed I have explained what the Peripatetics have to say; excepting that Theophrastus, and those who followed him, dread and abhor pain in too weak a manner. The others may go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue, as usual; and then, after they have extolled it to the skies, with the usual extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to nothing by comparison, and to hold them up ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... recognize the services of the pioneers of 1792), each in his own sphere having a common end in view, and animated by the same spirit, gave an impetus to the movement, the value and far-reaching extent of which it is almost impossible to exaggerate. Lord Shaftesbury,[294] celebrating his eightieth birthday this year, still lives to witness the fruits of his labours, of which the success of the well-known Acts with which his name is associated, will form an ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... in speaking of M. Domini's impatience, did not exaggerate the truth. That personage was furious; he could not comprehend the reason of the prolonged absence of his three fellow-workers of the previous evening. He had installed himself early in the morning in his cabinet, at the court-house, enveloped in his judicial robe; and he counted the minutes ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... to exaggerate the pleasure that we took in the approach of evening. Our day was not very long, but it was very tiring. To trip along unsteady planks or wade among shifting stones, to go to and fro for water, to clamber down the glen ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... castles, sitting side by side; they had an angry rivalry in walking, doubtless equally sincere upon both sides; and indeed we may say that Fleeming was exceptionally favoured, and that no boy had ever a companion more innocent, engaging, gay, and airy. But although in this case it would be easy to exaggerate its import, yet, in the Jenkin family also, the tragedy of the generations was proceeding, and the child was growing out of his father's knowledge. His artistic aptitude was of a different order. Already he had his quick sight of many sides of life; he already overflowed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... be halted, accosted, pleaded with—threatened, perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he was galvanized and dominated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Hurliguerly did not exaggerate, and I had already remarked this. To employ an expression of Edgar Poe's, Hunt had eyes ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... we consider the proportional size of the facial bones to the skull proper only, the little 'Chrysothrix' (Figure 16) differs very widely from the Gorilla, and, in the same way, as Man does; while the Baboons ('Cynocephalus', Figure 16) exaggerate the gross proportions of the muzzle of the great Anthropoid, so that its visage looks mild and human by comparison with theirs. The difference between the Gorilla and the Baboon is even greater than it appears at first sight; for the great facial mass of the former is ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... leave it, if you please, to me, for I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion, sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my finger"— in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not exaggerate at all. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... to exaggerate the services of Frontenac. Nothing could be more fallacious than the assertion, often repeated, that in his time Canada withstood the united force of all the British colonies. Most of these colonies took no part whatever in the war. Only two of them took an aggressive part, New ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... President Roosevelt to pay him my respects, and to express to him my obligations to some members of his Administration. I wished especially to acknowledge my indebtedness to that veteran statesman, Secretary Wilson, the value of whose long service to the American farmer it would be hard to exaggerate. Mr. Roosevelt questioned me as to the exact object of my inquiries, and asked me to come again and discuss with him more fully than was possible at the moment certain economic and social questions which had engaged much of his own thoughts. He was greatly ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... he has done wrong to Chaucer. But when, leaving these idle comparisons, he luxuriates in details about Ab Gwilym himself, and his poems, and his lady loves, and so forth, I have no doubt about Borrow's appreciation (casual prejudices always excepted) of literature. Nor is it easy to exaggerate the charm which he has added to Welsh scenery by this constant identification of it with the men, and the deeds, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... the present writer was in St. Andrews as Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology. To say that an enthusiasm for totems and taboos, ghosts and gods of savage men, was aroused by these lectures, would be to exaggerate unpardonably. Efforts to make the students write essays or ask questions were so entire a failure that only one question was received—as to the proper pronunciation of 'Myth.' Had one been fortunate enough to interest Murray, it must have led to some discussion of his literary attempts. ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... Hyperbole, whyche say the more then the truthe is in deede, as when we saye: The crye was hearde to heauen, meanyng it was a greate crye. An other kynde is by increase, whyche is when the thynges goyng before beynge exaggerate, we come from them to the hyeste: As agaynste Verres. It is a myscheuous deede to bynde a Citizen of Rome, haynous to beate hym, what? shall I saye to hange hym? An other waye of increase is, when wythoute distinccion in the context ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry

... from all signs of her former profession and identify herself as closely as possible with the ordinary "respectable" bourgeoise of the harem, from whom she has been distinguished hitherto by unveiled face and freedom of ingress and egress; and with this aim in view she would naturally be inclined to exaggerate the rigour of Muslim custom, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... creed is, in all essential particulars, the same with our own, and who err only in this, that they believe a great deal too much. It is, therefore, to be regretted, that in their zeal to remove error, so many well-intentioned persons should exaggerate the faults which they combat; for, independently of the wound which is thereby inflicted upon Christian charity, prejudices are but confirmed in proportion as indignation is roused. "You may demonstrate to me, if you can, that ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... compression, and that his own house was fast becoming alien territory to him, made him pounce upon the gentlemanly organist. His daughters wondered why he should, in the presence of this stranger, exaggerate his peculiar style of speech. But the worthy merchant's consciousness of his identity was vanishing under the iron social rule of the ladies. His perishing individuality prompted the inexplicable invitation, and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... these trees it is usual to dwell only on the dimensions of the very largest known specimens, and sometimes even to exaggerate these. Even the smaller full-grown trees, however, are of grand dimensions, varying from fourteen to eighteen feet in diameter, at six feet above the ground, and keeping nearly the same thickness for perhaps a hundred feet. In the south Calaveras grove, where ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... and French it is only because Germany has had less intimate relations than England with the culture spheres of classical Rome and France. This is true to a considerable extent, but it is not the whole truth. We must not exaggerate the physical importance of the Norman invasion nor underrate the significance of the fact that Germany's central geographical position made it peculiarly sensitive to French influences all through the Middle Ages, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... whole of Africa, India, and China, to preach the gospel to every creature. He felt deeply that both the Church at home, and many of the missionaries on the spot, had a poor conception of missionary duty, out of which came little faith, little effort, little expectation, with a miserable tendency to exaggerate their own evils and grievances, and fall into paltry squabbles which would not have been possible if they had been fired with the ambition to win the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... "Hey": never by any chance do we try to reach them with a "P-p-p-p-p" or a "T-t-t-t-t," and for precisely this reason. If, therefore, a singer wishes his words to carry to the end of the hall he must needs exaggerate his consonants to allow for this loss in transit: the vowels will look after themselves. Then, although the balance of the words as they are uttered may be a trifle distorted, they will nevertheless reach the hearers in due proportion. Comfort in listening is greatly ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... every object that met his eye of the harsh and rebellious sensations that he had allowed to reign over him at his last arrival there, which had made him wrangle over the bier of one so loving and beloved, and exaggerate the right till it wore the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking, "that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions;" and though we would hardly say with him, "that it is impossible not to wish that Shakspeare had never written them," giving us, as they do, and as perhaps ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... there are really no fathers quite so absurd as old Kennion. Does not Houghton exaggerate the type, as Dickens ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... his grievous disappointment, when the conscientious and labored study was shown to me, I could not but repeat that if it were true it did not look so to me, since it produced none of the sensations of the natural scene. "You would like me to exaggerate, then?" he asked. "Yes," I answered, "if that is the way to make it look true." But he persevered in his system. He used to camp out a week, sometimes a fortnight, wherever he made choice of a subject, and returned to the same spot several times afterwards, with his printed ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and Italy. And this ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... But I can assure your Majesty with entire truth that the need of your treasury is so pressing now that it is incomparable. Not less so is the barrenness of this country, which was formerly and usually the last resource. Consequently there is so universal misery that no words could exaggerate it to your Majesty. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... exaggerate when he praised him, then," said Pepe. "I am very sorry that I talked all that nonsense I did about lawyers. I was very perverse, was ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... transport it in baskets slung from the shoulders. They work very hard when paid by the piece, and are notorious for their skill in manipulating the pillars (sakhi, witness) left to mark work done, so as to exaggerate the measurement. On one occasion while working for me on a large lake at Govindpur, in the north of the Manbhum District, a number of Beldars transplanted an entire pillar during the night and claimed payment for several thousand ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Secretary of War knows very well that we have not 30,000 there, and that we are not likely to have more. We supposed Kentucky would rise. The enemy knows this fact as well as we do; nevertheless, it has been his practice from the beginning to exaggerate our numbers. It lulls us ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... we have read to you a letter in which the Court of Directors have described the disorders of their service, the utter ruin of it, the corruption that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country by it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use no stronger words than they do. We cannot mince the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there is a country expiring under all these things, from calling the authors to a strict account. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... words he said to me together with that short line to you. Mind, I don't say that he did not exaggerate my poor merits; on the contrary, I think he did. But I declare to you that he did hope I should take care of you and your child. Right or wrong, it was his wish, so pray do not deceive yourself ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... time—after an absence of something like nine months. I was received there with all the welcome it was possible for a prodigal son to be. My mother said she dreamed the night before I was coming home. I don't exaggerate facts much when I say there were great rejoicings in the camp at my home-coming. Of course, with paternal regard, my father wanted to know where I had been, and, when I had given him a hurried account of my peregrinations, he strongly recommended me to "jump into a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... and whose nature is such as to satisfy at once the head and the heart, restore joyousness as a necessary consequence. While certain aspects of Christianity certainly have a gloomy look,—which its critics are much disposed to exaggerate, and then to condemn,—yet Christianity at heart is a religion of profound joy, and this feature shows itself in such universal festivals as Christmas and Easter. Even though the Japanese popular religious life showed itself exclusively in festivals ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... William P. Van Ness, the young friend of Burr, that he was "governed by no principles or feelings except those which avarice and unprincipled ambition inspired."[121] Van Ness wrote with a pen dipped in gall, yet, if contemporary criticism be accepted, he did not exaggerate the feeling entertained for Spencer by the Federalists of that day. Like DeWitt Clinton, he was a bad hater, often insolent, sometimes haughty, and always arbitrary. After he left the Federalist party and became a member of the celebrated Council of 1801, he seemed over-zealous ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... of the day; a success which she had gracefully attributed to himself, saying that he must be greatly beloved by the Parisians to induce them to give his children so splendid a reception[3]. To whomsoever it was owing, the embassador certainly did not exaggerate the opinion of the world around him when he affirmed that, in the memory of man, no one recollected any ceremony which had made so great a sensation, and had been attended by so complete ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... could more easily conceive how some might speak better of them than they deserved, without any ill intention; for, as Kings had much in their power to give, those who were favoured by them would frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as this proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable, as far as ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... delivered himself of these assertions without violence, without passion or the sting of a new discovery; there was a familiar gaiety in his trivial little tone and he had the air of being so sure of what he said that he did not need to exaggerate in order to ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity—to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... speechless performance on the stage and that of the actors of a photoplay. The expression of the inner states, the whole system of gestures, is decidedly different: and here we might say that the photoplay stands nearer to life than the pantomime. Of course, the photoplayer must somewhat exaggerate the natural expression. The whole rhythm and intensity of his gestures must be more marked than it would be with actors who accompany their movements by spoken words and who express the meaning of their thoughts and feelings ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... vicissitudes and much misery, are still acted upon by the same elemental agencies as influenced the Patriarchs; are warmed by the same sun, freshened by the same air, and nourished by the same earth as cheered and invigorated and sustained the earlier generations. The costume of the East certainly does not exaggerate the fatal progress of time; if a figure becomes too portly, the flowing robe conceals the incumbrance which is aggravated by a western dress; he, too, who wears a turban has little dread of grey hairs; a grizzly beard indeed has few charms, but whether it were the lenity of time or the skill ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... that you exaggerate; Siddhattha is not dangerous. He is As gentle as my sister was, his mother, And almost overkind to ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... not to exaggerate; but I would like to state that I was well impressed by my experience of your ritual—if that is the correct term. I seemed to find what I had not found elsewhere. If I may speak quite openly, I would say it appeared ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... appetite for power inherent in human nature, and add to it the king's education in foreign countries and among the cavaliers, a party which would naturally exaggerate the late usurpations of popular assemblies upon the rights of monarchy, it is not surprising that civil liberty should not find in him a very zealous patron. Harassed with domestic faction, weary of calumnies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... impression that she was feeling your absence so acutely. Possibly it is always wiser to subtract at least half of the impression conveyed in both written and spoken words. Please understand that I am speaking in generalities when I say that we are exceedingly apt to exaggerate our own importance to others, and their ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... capital into the country by scores of millions for public works and the establishment of factories, and we have enriched India instead of impoverishing it to an extent that makes the Home Charges—of which such agitators as Digby always exaggerate the importance—a mere trifle in the balance." Lord Curzon's statement of three or four years back was that there were eight hundred and twenty-five crores of rupees (five hundred and fifty millions sterling) ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... New Zealand and South African and several other things, and she's been shipwrecked dozens of times," began Lennie Chapman, who was prone to exaggerate, and ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate the ill conduct of the insurgents that their malevolence was not pointed merely to a particular law, but that a spirit inimical to all order has actuated many of the offenders. If the state of things had afforded reason for the continuance of my presence ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington

... fact the change which took place was very great and very far-reaching for the nation, though it is easy to exaggerate the deviations from Roman doctrine imposed by it on the clergy of the Anglican Communion. But the movement was one in which many factors were at work. Moralists, theologians, and politicians, all had their share in it; some who were prominent promoters ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... solo in the field of artistic music of Europe might be traced to the establishment of the unisonal chant in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in defining such ground we should easily be led to exaggerate the importance of the solo. In the infancy of modern music the solo existed only in the folk song, in the rhapsodies of religious ecstatics and in the uncertain lyrics of the minnesingers and troubadours. ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... not," I answered earnestly. "I want to make you aware of my sympathy and my appreciation without offending you by seeming to exaggerate, and I don't know how to ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... frivolous and penniless and shabby! Granted—granted—a thousand times granted. I have been a loose fish—a fiddler, a painter, an actor. But there is this to be said: In the first place, I fancy you exaggerate; you lend me qualities I have n't had. I have been a Bohemian—yes; but in Bohemia I always passed for a gentleman. I wish you could see some of my old camarades—they would tell you! It was the liberty I liked, but not ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... your extravagant humours," said Albert: "you always exaggerate a case, and in this matter you are undoubtedly wrong; for we were speaking of suicide, which you compare with great actions, when it is impossible to regard it as anything but a weakness. It is much easier to die than to bear a life of misery ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... confidence in rulers, the people should be allowed to see as little of them as possible. It is the mystery which envelopes great men that gives them half their greatness. There is a kind of superstitious reverence for office which leads us to exaggerate the merits of the occupant, and to suppose that he must be wiser than common men. He, however, who gains access to cabinets, soon finds out by what foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... immediately, caught up and telegraphed all over the country. But it need to surprise even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him. He began to exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... our friends, you will not find here a well studied repast, but will meet with many incongruities of good eating and some barbarisms against good taste. If our good friend Damis had ordered it, all would be according to rule; there would be elegance and erudition everywhere; and he would not fail to exaggerate to you the excellence of every dish, and to make you acknowledge his high capacity in the science of good eating. He would speak to you of a loaf with golden sides, crusty all over, and yielding ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)

... not exaggerate the matter. I do not mean to escape: I only want to leave for a time. I shall come back, I give you my word ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... Oh, Dreda, you do exaggerate! A passing disappointment like that! Such a little, little thing, when there are such big prizes waiting in life! Oh, Dreda, you ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... letters from Franklin, the charming old man, whose fondness for "that dear nation" which he could not leave without regret was returned a thousand fold by its admiring affection. De Rayneval did not exaggerate when he wrote to him,—"You will carry with you the affection of all France"; and De Chastellux told the simple truth in the graceful compliment he sent to the old sage after his return home,—"When you were here, we had no need to praise the Americans; we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... colours or timbres—the very clear (open) and the very sombre (closed), which they exaggerate. In reality, however, the gradations between them can be made infinite by the artist who is in possession of the secret—especially if he has the ability to combine ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... every one. Old settlers, describing winter storms, have been accused of an imagination as expansive as the prairie; but I affirm no man could exaggerate the fury of a blizzard on the unbroken prairie. To one thing only may it be likened—a hurricane at sea. People in lands boxed off at short compass by mountain ridges forget with what violence a wind sweeping half a continent ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... state adequately the evil results which have flowed from this dualism of mind and body, much less to exaggerate them. Some of the more striking effects, may, however, be enumerated. (a) In part bodily activity becomes an intruder. Having nothing, so it is thought, to do with mental activity, it becomes a distraction, an evil to be contended with. For the pupil has ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... around. Persons who first acquired their ideas at second hand are more open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part by an almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which render it isolated. Milton is an example of this remark. In the commencement of the struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament, he sympathized ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... invested him with all the power and dignity of an Apostle, and when with these attributes were joined those associations of the past with which he was so intimately connected, it is impossible to exaggerate the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... exaggerate the esteem in which the tribal ancestress is held; she is so greatly reverenced that she may truly be said to be deified. In such worship rests the foundation of the deep tribal piety. Ka Iawbei, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... not exaggerate the belle lettres and classical accomplishments of at least two of the "chattels" of the "peculiar institution," in the lines following the above, see "Poems written by Rosa and Maria," property of South Carolina, and ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... have been so beautiful, over-sensitiveness causes you to exaggerate your misfortune, but enough, tell me your story. Tell me about the ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey

... when things of consequence takes one up, one can't attend to mere trifling. When I say this, you will ask me, where is my philosophy! Even where the best is: I think as coolly as I can, I don't exaggerate what is disagreeable, and I endeavour to lessen it, by undervaluing what I am inclined to think ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Epist. lxxxix. His language is of the declamatory kind: but declamation could scarcely exaggerate the avarice and luxury of the Romans. The philosopher himself deserved some share of the reproach, if it be true that his rigorous exaction of Quadringenties, above three hundred thousand pounds which he had lent at high interest, provoked a rebellion in Britain, (Dion Cassius, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... of six hundred and odd hectares is a specimen of high farming on a large scale, such as I had never before witnessed in France. I do not exaggerate when I say that from end to end could not be discerned a single weed. Of course, the expense of cultivation on such a scale is very great, and hardly remunerative at the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Suppose that such checks had been in action during the last two or three centuries, or even for a shorter time in Britain, what a difference it would have made in the world, when we consider America, Australia, New Zealand, and S. Africa! No words can exaggerate the importance, in my opinion, of our colonisation for the future ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... be difficult to exaggerate the influence of this gift to the English people. It constitutes the standard of Middle English. Chaucer and Wiclif stood side by side. It is true that Chaucer himself accepted Wiclif's teaching, and some of the wise men think that the "parson" of whom he speaks so finely as ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... them left standing, are full of shrapnel. The road outside our door is dented with shell holes. Every house in the village is shot full of metal. There's a battery of seven Belgian guns spitting away in our back-yard. But we don't call it hot, because we hate to exaggerate." ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune, great as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical conformation,—it was but the crisis, the development, of a long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... middle seat and played chorus. The road was not a bad one, as natural mountain roads go; I have myself driven worse in California. Our man, however, liked to exaggerate all the difficulties, and while doing it to point to himself with pride as a perfect wonder. Between times ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... of the "sane mind" has been a little overdone, I think. The men who are prone to say of everyone that they "exaggerate a little," or "are morbid," are like weights in a scale—just, but oh, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... a similar war more irrational or inopportune. It checked the reaction, which had commenced under the Consulate, in favour of creeds and the sentiment of religion. I have no desire to exaggerate the value of that reaction; I hold faith and true piety in too much respect to confound them with the superficial vicissitudes of human thought and opinion. Nevertheless the movement which led France back towards Christianity was more sincere and serious than it actually appeared to be. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... We would not exaggerate the importance of these little children or their cause. We have said that we realise, as we did not when first this work began, how very delicate and difficult a matter it would be for Government to take ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... this circle at the moment was that Judy had made a fool of herself—that she had actually burst out crying in church when Mr. Mullen had announced his acceptance of a distant call! He was sorry for Abel, because Judy was his wife, but, since it is human nature to exaggerate the personal element, he was far sorrier for himself because she ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... is, that we very much exaggerate the power of riches. Immense subscriptions are got up for the purpose of reforming men from their sinful courses, and turning them from evil to good. And yet subscriptions will not do it. It is character that can do the work; money never can. Great changes ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... this subject the more because there is in a fit of convulsions something so intensely painful to behold that it is easy to exaggerate its danger, and to lose all presence of mind in panic. First, then, it is well to bear in mind that real disease of the brain rarely, very rarely, I do not say never, begins with convulsions; and next, that their real danger is in general in exactly ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... to exaggerate the piety of the dominating powers in Massachusetts during the first years of the colony's existence. It was almost a mysticism. That intimate and incommunicable experience which is sometimes called ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... temperate, patient, steadfast, and full of courage. His imagination, never aroused, does not exaggerate dangers. He feels few discomforts, and can bear pain with fortitude, because he has never learned to contend with fate. He does not yet know exactly what death is, but, accustomed to yield to the law of necessity, he will die when he must, without ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... "You exaggerate that calamity, sir," replied Woodward, with the slightest imaginable sneer, "and forget that if I die you ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... his train! Good God! and I might have—I might have——" The Squire did not finish his sentence; no words but what seemed to him violent and extreme would have fulfilled his conception of the danger he had escaped, and it was against his nature and his training to exaggerate a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... an exceedingly accurate member of the staff. "How you fellows DO exaggerate!" Subsequent knowledge of the Gold Coast has convinced me fully that the extra funeral being placed half-an-hour sooner than it occurred is the usual percentage of exaggeration you will be able to find in stories relating to the local mortality. And at Accra, after I left ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... foolishly; she won't even allow me to meet her out of doors, at the theatre. Now you, in whom she has such enormous confidence, couldn't you say a few words for me to her, just to assure her that she exaggerate the harm which my bowing to her in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... sharp words which did not seem so bad at the time, careless or selfish neglect of the wishes we could have gratified with just a little trouble—how they all rise up afterwards and refuse to be forgotten! Our grief may then exaggerate our past unkindness perhaps, and, as is the way with our weak human nature, things out of our reach seem of double value; the affection we knew to be always at hand we never prized enough till we lost it. But should we not take this as a warning? ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... strengthening the position of the beneficiaries of reaction. This was the era when the Standard Oil Company achieved a mastery of Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching and so corrupt that it is difficult to describe it without seeming to exaggerate. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... done to put the mother in the best possible physical and mental condition. All I want to say is that it is bad to be insane on the subject, that it is bad to take things in an absolute sense, and that it is bad to exaggerate. ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... a great deal of the joy of life by taking ourselves too seriously. We exaggerate our own importance, and so if the honor or distinction or the vote of thanks does not come our way, we are hurt! Then, too, we live in an atmosphere of dread and fear—we fear poverty and hard work—we fear the newspapers and the neighbors, and ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... at conclusions. Most people approach social questions not with a scientific mind, but with preconceptions which mar their judgment. For example, the socialist exaggerates the effect of bad wage conditions, and the Woman's Auxiliary Department of the police exaggerate the influence of home conditions. Again, personal testimony is unreliable, because, on the one hand, victims of the social evil are liable to blame external conditions; and, on the other hand, well-fed, well-housed investigators ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... is in the state of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing, they have divided their nation into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate; this is a true picture of Europe." Tucker's ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... exaggerate. Uneducated she certainly is. She can write a little; and in the long stormy days and evenings, I read aloud to her and to her brother. But Scott and Burns and Leigh Hunt are not an education. Her Bible has really been ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... told the king that even on a peace footing the annual expenditures exceeded the annual receipts of the exchequer by 20,000,000 livres; and he even talked seriously of an avowal of national bankruptcy. The events preceding the French Revolution soon proved that this great statesman did not exaggerate the ill condition of affairs. Yet instead of practicing rigid prudence and economy, France had actually gone into a costly war for the benefit of America. It was peculiarly disagreeable to be ceaselessly appealing for ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... Jansoulet had seen and heard, those few words, assisted by two bottles of burgundy and divers petits verres sufficed to restore his courage. After all, people had been known to recover when they were as far gone. Doctors often exaggerate the danger in order to gain more credit for averting it. "Suppose I go and see?" He returned to the hotel de Mora, full of illusions, appealing to the luck that had stood him in good stead so many times in his life. And in truth there was something in the appearance of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... perceive its extent and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance—an importance extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being truly alive, while polytheism ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... sparrow falls to the ground without the cognisance of its Creator! As for Sabina, I love her and have devoted many hours to her education. I also love Raymond Ironsyde—for his own sake as well as his family's. I am perfectly certain that you exaggerate the facts. Such a thing is quite incredible. Shall I quarrel with a gracious flower because a wandering bee has set a seed? He may be an ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... that as soon as the sociability and the heavy drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated at the Table Round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either; and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... word that suggests complete abandonment. It is too—what shall I say?—too sly and demonic—too much inside the little secrets of the great Mother—to be summed up in a word that suggests a sort of Titanic whirlwind of embraces. And yet, on the other hand, it is quite as easy to exaggerate the Olympian aspect of Goethe. When this is carried too far, something in him, something extraordinarily characteristic, evaporates, like a thin stream of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... I to do? I can't exaggerate the sense of urgency Mlle. Malo's appeal gave me, or my faith in her sincerity. No one who had seen her meeting with Rechamp the night before could have doubted her feeling for him: if she wanted him away it was not because she did not delight in his ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... moment, he could have held a crowd. The man of the world—the fastidious dandy—had shed his mask; there stood the leader, calm, serene in the very face of the most deadly danger that had ever encompassed any man, looking that danger fully in the face, not striving to belittle it or to exaggerate it, but weighing it in the balance with what there was to accomplish: the rescue of a martyred, innocent child from the hands of fiends who were destroying his very soul even more ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... the fraternity giving it as their opinion that the author had exhausted himself, or, as the technical phrase expresses it, written himself out; and as an unusual tract of success too often provokes many persons to mark and exaggerate a slip when it does occur, the author was publicly accused, in prose and verse, of having committed a literary suicide in this unhappy attempt. The voices, therefore, were, for a time, against Saint Ronan's on the southern side ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... seized with a pang which nothing but the spasm of verse will relieve. Each youth imagines that spring-tide and love are wonders which he is the first of human beings to appreciate, and he burns to alleviate his emotion in rhyme. Historians exaggerate, perhaps, the function of music in awakening and guiding the exercise of lyrical poetry. The lyric exists, they tell us, as an accompaniment to the lyre; and without the mechanical harmony the spoken song is an artifice. Quite as plausibly might it be avowed that ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... own aspirations, nourished in the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in the other, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete and systematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy to exaggerate their simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how John Bunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which he lived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with that world. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon the spiritual region, but ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... not much less so who cuts off any of those pleasures that nature has provided for him. A man should neither pursue nor avoid them, but receive them. I receive them, I confess, a little too warmly and kindly, and easily suffer myself to follow my natural propensions. We have no need to exaggerate their inanity; they themselves will make us sufficiently sensible of it, thanks to our sick wet-blanket mind, that puts us out of taste with them as with itself; it treats both itself and all it receives, one while ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... masterpiece in comedy, "Minna von Barnhelm," is difficult to exaggerate. It was the beginning of German national drama; and by the patriotic interest of its historical background, by its sympathetic treatment of the German soldier and the German woman, and by its happy blending of the amusing and the pathetic, it won a place in the national heart ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... exaggerate, or do you only indulge in it occasionally, young 'un?" quietly inquired Percival, the master's-mate, looking up from a book he ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... frequently been remarked is that Brussels has two contrasting elements of life, which, lying close, one upon the other, strongly exaggerate the French note of it all, and make the hotels, cafes, restaurants, etc., take on that boulevard aspect which ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... and I hastened to say that all of the colored teachers were on one side and the white teachers on the other. "Now that will never do," he replied quickly. "You must never allow a color line to be drawn." He spoke with such evident feeling that I realized that his last word was said. We cannot exaggerate the importance of this fundamental dilemma. If we hope to win in any contest, we must unite, but the unwisest thing we can do, is to unite ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook

... on the same level as the floor of the chamber, her head is in a line with the roof beam which rests on the capital of the sacred pillar. The remains of an actual shrine discovered in 1907 close to the Central Court at Knossos show that the fresco does not exaggerate the smallness of the sacred buildings. The Gournia shrine, situated in the centre of the town, is about twelve feet square, and its discoverer believes that the walls of the sacred enclosure may never have stood more than eighteen inches high. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... As to the Famine, several of the gentlemen sent by the Charitable Societies to make Reports, wrote back, that there was no exaggeration whatever, and, for a very sufficient reason, namely, that, in their opinion, it was impossible to exaggerate the dreadful condition in which they ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... constantly employed on the occasion. Van-ta-gin assured me, that there were seldom fewer than one thousand men, and frequently many more, employed one way or other in its service; and I am persuaded he did not intend to exaggerate. In the first place, from the mouth of the Pei-ho to Tong-tchoo, we had forty-one yachts or barges, each on an average, including boatmen, trackers, and soldiers, having on board fifteen men; this gives six hundred and fifteen men to the boats only. Caterers ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... its scope which appears to be still rife, though I have sought to correct it before now. If in the present work I have dwelt at some length on the worship of trees, it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its importance in the history of religion, still less because I would deduce from it a whole system of mythology; it is simply because I could not ignore the subject in attempting to explain the significance of a priest who ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... But it is in virtue of right. If I wanted to take your ladyship's property, your dogs would be justified in refusing me my way.—I do not think I exaggerate when I say that, if my mare here had her way, there would not be a living creature about your house by this ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... might exaggerate the success of their teachers; yet, it must be owned, that their doctrine of insubordination, joined to their vagrant and lawless habits, was calculated strongly to ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... in making my point, to seem to exaggerate, but so far as what people do to me is concerned if people would get up and go out of a hall each sentence they stop listening or stop understanding, it would not be any worse—the psychological clang of it—than what they do do. It would merely ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Christina's thoughts, while she bit her lips to hide if possible her inclination to be angry, and to laugh at the same time. And in truth her dislike of the Count did not exaggerate the ridiculousness of the appearance of the tall ungainly figure—large-boned and stiff-backed—that now stood before her—with a nose so absurdly aquiline that it would have done for a caricature—coarse-skinned cheeks, and a stare ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... new buildings and paused for a moment on the curb to look it over. Though handsome architecturally and modern in every respect, there was a peculiar sombreness about the building, and the bright lamps that gleamed at the entrance but served to exaggerate the dim interior ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... Dislike of a sentence that drags made him unconscious of the quality, that French critics name coulant. Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell is enough to persuade us that Pope did not exaggerate when he said that no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... sensations? I don't believe it gives any. [Thoughtfully] Either you exaggerate my fame, or else, if it exists, all I can say is that one simply doesn't feel ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... I exaggerate my own defects. The reader must not take my own word for it, nor believe me altogether changed from the young man who once hoped strenuously, and struggled not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... things not so personal to us. Again, my mistake of treating her as if she were marked "Fragile. Handle with care." I know now that she, like all women, had the plain, tough, durable human fibre under that exterior of delicacy and fragility, and that my overconsideration caused her to exaggerate to herself her own preposterous notions of her superior fineness. We walked for an hour, talking—with less constraint and more friendliness than ever before, and when I left her I, for the first time, felt that I had left a ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... talk about it, there was a theory that art and imaginative literature ought to deal with contemporary life; but they never did so; for, if there was any pretence of it, the author always took care . . . to disguise, or exaggerate, or idealise, and in some way or another make it strange; so that, for all the verisimilitude there was, he might just as well have dealt with the times ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... was a warning to us, in no way, or by the slightest sign, to give up the fight, or to concede Hughes' election. He said: "Early returns will naturally run against Wilson in the East, particularly in Illinois and Iowa," and intimated to me that the plan at Republican headquarters would be to exaggerate these reports and to overwhelm us with news of Republican victories throughout the country. Continuing his talk he said: "The Wilson fight will be won in the West. I shall keep you advised of what is happening in Republican headquarters. I can only tell you that I will know what is ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... operations; the latter was the difficulty it had always been for the past two years, but in a different way. In the desert, whilst the wells were few and far between they were seldom more than fifty or sixty feet deep; in the district around Beersheba there were, to exaggerate a little, almost as many wells as in the whole of the Sinai Desert, but you could not get at the water! Scarcely a well was less than a hundred feet deep and most of them were anything over that up to a hundred and eighty; ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... however, may burst her barriers eastward as well as westward, toward the Pacific as well as toward the European Continent. In such a movement it would be impossible to exaggerate the momentous issues dependent upon a firm hold of the Sandwich Islands by a great, civilized, maritime power. By its nearness to the scene, and by the determined animosity to the Chinese movement which close contact seems to inspire, our own country, with its Pacific ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan



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