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Exaggeration   /ɪgzˌædʒərˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Exaggeration

noun
1.
Extravagant exaggeration.  Synonym: hyperbole.
2.
The act of making something more noticeable than usual.
3.
Making to seem more important than it really is.  Synonyms: magnification, overstatement.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Exaggeration" Quotes from Famous Books



... over his head, he will decorate the parapet in his immediate vicinity with picture postcards and cigarette photographs. Then he leans back with a happy sigh. His work is done. His home from home is furnished. He is now at leisure to think about "they Gairmans" again. That may sound like an exaggeration; but "Comfort First" is the motto of that lovable but imprudent grasshopper, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... pennies were all bad pennies, which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the Lusitania. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations, apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship carrying ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. Exactly how and why I killed him, and how and why I am about to kill myself, I will now set forth, without the slightest exaggeration, special pleading or any other ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... apotheosized chief or king, joined with stories of his companions and amplified by narratives of accompanying transactions, formed the first histories. And from these accounts of the doings of particular men and groups of men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... certain fact, that in such inquiries as the present, our enemies may be of much more use to us than our friends. They may, they generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception. Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others bring ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... moment!) had been engaged in a contest of wit with Lady Morgan and another female celebrite, in which Curry had rather the worst of it. It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none, a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her little coterie, when she called out, "Ah! come back Mr. Curry, and acknowledge that you are fairly beaten." "At any rate," said he, turning ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various

... above many descriptions of travel to the Holy Land, whose authors, trusting to the fact that their assertions could not easily be disproved, have indulged their fancy, seeking to impart interest to their works by the relation of imaginary dangers, and by exaggeration of every kind, for the sake of gaining praise and admiration. Many such men might blush with shame on reading this journal of a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... indifference. Hellbeam to him was just an employer. A means to those ends which he had in view. If Hellbeam turned him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration. Besides, he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford to do without him in this matter. His intolerant, hectic temper mattered nothing at all. He paid for the privilege of its display, and he ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... count, prince, or other who can have had a country at his will as James van Artevelde had for a long time." It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... animal, no doubt, Jonas," he said the first time he inspected it; "but he certainly looks as if he had a beast of a temper. I fear what was told my mother about him is no exaggeration; for Mr. Markham told me to-day, when I rode down there with his son, and said that we had bought Wildfire, that a friend of his had had him once, and only kept him for a week, for he was the most vicious ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... they are establishing the wife's literary reputation. So much for Madame Carolina! I need hardly add that during your short stay at Court you will be delighted with her. If ever you know her as well as I do, you will find her vain, superficial, heartless; her sentiment a system, her enthusiasm exaggeration, and her genius merely a clever adoption of the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... so in relation to physical beauty. A person who is without demonstrable defect of beauty—some exaggeration of proportion, some visible flaw—leaves us cold and indifferent. The flaw or the defect may need to be of some special kind or quality to touch us individually, but still it is needed. The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. As I write my eye falls on a plate of tomatoes. The ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... brows and assuming all sorts of perilous elegancies of pronunciation that Imogen had never before heard her attempt. It was an additional vexation to have them display toward herself, with even more exaggeration than usual, their tenacious tenderness; listening, with a grave turning of head and eye when she spoke, and receiving each remark with an over-emphasis of feeling on ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... half an hour of Kearney street I could raise a dozen men for any wild adventure, from pulling down a statue to searching for the Cocos Island treasure." This is hardly an exaggeration, it was the Rialto of the desperate, ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin

... There was the strictest quarantine for letters in the Rue St. Jean. Even letters to and from parents passed through madame's private office. She opened and read Harry Musgrave's as an obvious necessity, smiled over its boyish exaggeration, and relished its fun at her own expense, for madame was a woman of wisdom and humor. Little by little she had learnt the whole of Bessie's life and conversation from her own lips; and she felt that there was nothing to be feared from a lover of young Musgrave's ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... gold. Emilius fancied at first it must be some extravagant mask that had lost its way: but the bright light soon convinced him that the old brown wrinkled face was one of Nature's ploughing, and no mimic exaggeration. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... it as an act of cowardice and meanness, to fall passively down the stream of popularity, to suffer his reason and integrity to be overborne by the noise of vulgar clamours, which had been raised against the measures of government by the low arts of exaggeration, fallacious reasonings, and partial representations. This is the very language which sir Robert Walpole had often used against Mr. Pulteney and his confederates in the house of commons. The associates of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... notions on such subjects, the expected Coleridge cast of thought was very visible; and he seemed to express it even with exaggeration, and in a fearless dogmatic manner. Identity of sentiment, difference of opinion: these are the known elements of a pleasant dialogue. We parted with the mutual wish to meet again;—which accordingly, at his ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... Carver, a colonial officer, puts the killed and captured at 1500. A French writer, whose work was published at Montreal, says that they were all killed, except seven hundred who were captured; but this is, of course, a gross exaggeration. General Levis and Roubaud, who were certain to have made the best of the matter, acknowledged that they saw some fifty corpses scattered on the ground, but this does not include those murdered in the fort ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... gentlemanly ease and polish, and she had been very proud of having so fine a city brother to introduce to the girls. Imagine her astonishment and chagrin when she saw him standing before Lina with an exaggeration of the agitated, sheepish air the girls made such fun of in their rural admirers! But if that surprised her, what was her amazement to see Lina looking equally confused, and blushing to where her neck curved beneath the lace, although the brave eyes met ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... is one of Dickens's finest works. It is rounded off so completely and the characters are so admirably drawn that, as a finished work of art, it is hard to say where the genius of its author has surpassed it. If there is less of the exuberance of "Pickwick," there is also less of the characteristic exaggeration of Dickens; and the pathos of the ex-convict's return is far deeper than the pathos of children's death-beds, so frequently exhibited by the author. "Great Expectations," for all its rare qualities, has never achieved the wide popularity of the novels of Charles ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... books, but there were a few writings on parchment rolls which young scholars were taught to read. Some of these writings were treatises on philosophy, others were romantic histories, narrating the exploits of the heroes of those days—of course, with much exaggeration and embellishment. There were also some poems, still more romantic than the histories, though generally on the same themes. The greatest productions of this kind were the writings of Homer, an ancient poet who lived and wrote four or five hundred years before ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... and profligacy was drawn by one whose love of truth rendered him incapable of deceit or of exaggeration. It was published at the time, and was unanswered, because unanswerable. It was not painted from imagination by an ascetic; but from life by an enlightened observer—not by the poor preaching mechanic when incarcerated in a jail for his godliness; but when his painful sufferings ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... another has missed the target, therefore the shots that hit the target did so by accident." {92} But as empty hallucinations are more likely to be forgotten than those which coincide with a death; as exaggeration creeps in, as the collectors of evidence are naturally inclined to select and question people whom they know to have a good story to tell, the evidence connecting apparitions, voices, and so on with deaths is not likely to be ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... men (some women do it too), practically behave as if the scientific end were the only one in view, or as if the sick body were but a reservoir for stowing medicines into, and the surgical disease only a curious case the sufferer has made for the attendant's special information. This is really no exaggeration. You think, if you suspected your patient was being poisoned, say, by a copper kettle, you would instantly, as you ought, cut off all possible connection between him and the suspected source of injury, without regard to the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale

... on his warm feelings; and having owned that his seeing my Newfoundland dog well fed and lodged would be a great obligation, I withdrew to fret alone over my exile to this foreign land. You may call this an exaggeration, but it is no such thing. I delight in dwelling upon my reluctant approach to the land that I was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... life. But the Republicanism which he revered must be interpreted by himself; and the party which bore the name Republican was split into several sections, mutually discordant if not actually hostile. It seems no exaggeration to say that the underlying motive of the majority of the Republican Party during Roosevelt's Presidency was to uphold Privilege, just as much as the underlying purpose of the great Whig Party in England in the eighteenth century was to uphold Aristocracy. Roosevelt's purpose, on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... disposition de ce qu'on pourrait appeler la charpente qu'ont ete faits les deux portraits que je vous donne." He went on to say that he had pointed out to them the fault in Victor Hugo's style as being exaggeration in conception, and, at the same time, he had made them notice the extreme beauty of his "nuances" of expression. They were then dismissed to choose the subject of a similar kind of portrait. This selection M. Heger always left to them; for "it is necessary," he observed, "before sitting down to write ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... actually subdued by her love could not but charm him. He had none of that strength which arms a man against flatterers;—none of that experience which strengthens a man against female cajolery. It was to him very serious and very solemn. There might, perhaps, have been exaggeration in her mode of describing her feelings, but there could be no doubt in this,—that he had held her in his arms and that she was another ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... exaggeration to say that the accession of the Princess Victoria reinstated the English monarchy in the affections of the people. George IV. had made the Throne unpopular; William IV. had restored its popularity, but not its dignity. Both of these kings were men of decided ability, but of unbalanced ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... got the weather man backed off inter a corner an' squealin' for help. They ain't all like Kansas. My first resembled it, the second was sorter tropic—she run off with a rainmaker an' I hear she's been divorced three times since then. Mebbe that's an exaggeration. My third must have been born someways nigh the no'th pole. W'en she got mad she'd freeze ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... told that this is an exaggeration; that thousands of mothers make it a point to cover up the beads of their infants; and that notwithstanding this, they are as healthy as the infants of their neighbors. I have not said that they would droop and die while infants. The fumes ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... Alexander and his successors; no one of them could have seen the temple intact and measured its height. Founded upon tradition or upon the inspection of the remains, the figure given by the geographer can only be approximate. I should think it is probably an exaggeration. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... of the Egyptian cult in the Oriental half of the empire has been clearly shown by von Domaszewski (Roem. Mitt., XVII, 1902, pp. 333 ff.), but perhaps with some exaggeration. All will endorse the restrictions formulated by Harnack, Ausbreitung des ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... ideal which has counted for much in the history of the race is the ideal of the family—pure, honorable, and sacred. The veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... Pishachmochan, a word meaning deliverance from demons, as bathing in it is considered very efficacious in securing this end, and the temple and tank of Durga at a place called Durgakund. At this latter place there are many hundreds of monkeys—some say thousands, though this is doubtless an exaggeration—which scamper about in all directions, and fare well at the hands of Durga's worshippers. These animals are deemed gods and goddesses, and woe to the person who does ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... "closeness," we have heard it whispered that he once went up to the right of the "Old Hen,"—[Glasscock's Island and the "Old Hen" were phenomenally safe places.]—but this is probably a pardonable little exaggeration, prompted by the love and admiration in which he is held by various ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... birth the family had lost its pristine splendour. But there has been a tendency to exaggeration of the extent of the decadence, by way of foil to the merit which retrieved the ruin. John Hooker, a contemporary Devonshire antiquary, uncle to the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, described the family as 'consopited,' and as ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... was merely a permitted exception. He reversed this order and his claim to be considered in this respect as one of the great revolutionary religious and moral reformers has not been sufficiently recognised. It is remarkable that, unlike other reformers, he has not contradicted error by an exaggeration, which itself very soon stands in need of contradiction, but by simple sanity which requires no correction. One reason for this peculiarity is that the Ethic was the result of long meditation. It was published posthumously and was discussed in draft for many years ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... question, "Where is the key?" answers nicht mehr da (no longer there). As I found in the following months no falsehood, in the proper sense of the word, to record, but rather that the least error, the most trivial exaggeration, was corrected at once by the child himself, with peculiarly naive seriousness, in a little story, with pauses between the separate words, so, too, in the present case the answer nicht mehr da is no falsehood, but is to be understood as meaning that the key is no longer ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my fellowmen ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... properly speaking, bays, beside; for in the Archipelago alone there are no fewer than eleven. However, while we are so near, it may be of some advantage to take a peep at Venice, 'the dream-like city of a hundred isles:' that expression is a poetical exaggeration, for Venice is built upon seventy-two small islands. Over the several canals, are laid nearly five hundred bridges, most of them built of stone. The Rialto was once considered the largest single-arched bridge in the world, and is well known to English readers from the work ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... going to church,' said the German emigrants,—and they were about right. A French traveler, in the year 1837, says that attending the Thursday-evening lectures and church prayer-meetings was the only recreation of the young people of Boston; and we can remember the time when this really was no exaggeration. Think of that, with all the seriousness of our Boston east winds to give it force, and fancy the provision for amusement in our society! The consequence is, that boys who have the longing for amusement strongest within them, and plenty of combativeness to back it, are the standing ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... rather deep set in—had only one defect: he was not a poet. Not that this would have seemed to him anything but an advantage, had he been aware of it. His was one of those high-principled natures who hold that breadth is synonymous with weakness. It may be said without exaggeration that the few meetings of his life with those who had a touch of the poet in them had been exquisitely uncomfortable. Silent, almost taciturn by nature, he was a great reader of poetry, and seldom went to sleep without having digested a page or two of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... seem to have been considered by the Government of the United States. The British military detachment stationed at Lake Temiscouata, which the agents employed by the State of Maine had, in the first instance with singular exaggeration represented as amounting to two regiments, is now discovered by the same parties to amount to 175 men, which instead of two regiments is something less than two companies. It is indeed true, should such a point be considered worth discussing, that the undersigned might have used a more ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... of these schemes. After the General had mentioned that the left did so well the other day Halstead said in the Mess: 'Yes, our left flank was fine, thanks to Floyd; he managed it like a general!' That is, of course exaggeration in the opposite direction; I make no claim to any talents of that kind: but it is encouraging for one's company commander to talk like that, more encouraging than the way the second-in-command, Giffin, behaves. Giffin is quite agreeable generally, but I ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... ought to marry him? Besides, to whom had she given Di? They were not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened her own cause by trying to reinforce it with all the Stympson farrago, the exaggeration of which Dermot, after his own meeting with Henry Alison, and with Prometesky to corroborate him, was fully prepared to explode, to the satisfaction even of ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... visiting. She then said that I was the only friend that she had in the world; and later, when the plan was in successful operation, she told me that she attributed all her prosperity to me, and that she was a star in my crown. That she owed all her prosperity to me was of course an exaggeration. I could not have helped her had she not been the essentially decent woman she was. But, at the same {214} time, it was true that, had she not been helped and encouraged when her destitution was so great, she would probably have lacked both the physical and moral strength, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... (basement entrance) and have a bad night, or the flies are troublesome, you do get a feeling of passionate economy; you realize that there are people you can do without, and you do without them. This is the whole truth about a little failing of which my detractors have made the most. Calumny and exaggeration have been carried to such an extent that more than once I have been ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... incorrect or a monstrous exaggeration. It would have been very nice to fight one's way through The Desert in the midst of every kind of beast and monster which the gloomy imagination of men may have conjured up from the beginning of the annals of adventure ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Paramon Semyonitch,' Punin commonly added (he never spoke of Baburin except in this way), 'I should have sunk into the miry abysses of poverty and vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What a crazy fellow you've grown! God have mercy on you!' my old nurse used to say to me. Punin's ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... of Hindenburg is wider than the east—and the west; it permeates the business world and stiffens the economic backbone of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet six in height, and wore a conical-pointed cap of nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a "swallow-tail," but was much obscured by the swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling round the old house, carried it clear out from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... witchcraft. In this, as in many other cases, the advance of a larger enlightenment prevents us from calling it anything. There was mixed with it, no doubt, the deep Moslem admiration for mere masculinity, which has probably by its exaggeration permitted the Moslem subordination of women. But Kitchener (who was himself accused, rightly or wrongly, of a disdain for women) must have himself contributed some other element to the strangest of international sympathies. ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... Marshall's Quilp, Vernon's Bunthorne, and Hoskins's Touchstone, were impersonations of a high-class. Soldene, curious to say, did not hit the popular taste. The cardinal fault of colonial acting seems to me to be exaggeration. Most of our actors are artificial and stagey; even those who clear themselves of these faults seem to play down to the understanding of their audience. The 'star' system is as prevalent as in England. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... not been charged in modern times; and as at the period the missionaries wrote the first histories of them, it was politic to exaggerate the difficulties these useful men had to encounter, in order to enhance their services, it is not uncharitable to believe that much exaggeration crept into the accounts of the savages, especially if we recollect the miracles ascribed in those very accounts to many of the missionaries themselves. Besides these measures concerning the Indians, other steps were taken for the good of the country ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... she cried, "what refuge have I now from ridicule, or perhaps disgrace! Mr Delvile has been detected watching me in disguise! he has been discovered at this late hour meeting me in private! The story will reach his family with all the hyperbole of exaggeration;—how will his noble mother disdain me! how cruelly shall I sink before the severity ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... this agreeable buffoonery, you must not forget certain accessories—particularly portraits of your ancestors. They should ornament the castle walls where you regale the country nobles. One must use tact in the selection of this family gallery. There must be no exaggeration. Do not look too high. Do not claim as a founder of your race a knight in armor hideously painted, upon wood, with his coat of arms in one corner of the panel. Bear in mind the date of chivalry. Be satisfied with the head of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... day. She did not go out of her room again. Her mood changed a hundred times. The resolve to confess alternated with wild mockery and laughter, but still returned. She would struggle to persuade herself that her whole condition was one of foolish exaggeration, of senseless excitement about nothing—the merest delirium of feminine fastidiousness; and the next instant would turn cold with horror at a fresh glimpse of the mere fact. What could the wretched matter be to him now—or to her? Who was the worse, or had ever been the worse but herself? ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... movable wealth would be exposed to imminent risk of spoliation and destruction. Still greater would be the risk to public credit, on which thousands of families directly depend for subsistence, and with which the credit of the whole commercial world is inseparably connected. It is no exaggeration to say that a civil war of a week on English ground would now produce disasters which would be felt from the Hoang-ho to the Missouri, and of which the traces would be discernible at the distance of a century. In ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... deal in this respect. To say, as he did, 'Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,' is surely a glaring exaggeration. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... restraint that causes him to overdo his part. Were Hudibras shorter, the satire would be more effective. Though in parts often as terse in style as Pope's best work, still the poem is too long, and it undoes the force of its attack on the Puritans by its exaggeration. ...
— English Satires • Various

... struggle against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her. Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin: 'For my own part and experience—I do not say it as a phrase or in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction—I do believe that I should be mad at this moment, if I had not forced back—dammed out—the current of rushing recollections by work, work, work.' One of the projects in which she was concerned was ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... is no exaggeration to say that, when you have summoned up before you the ugliest forms of man's sins that you can fancy, this one overtops them all, because it presents in the simplest form the mother-tincture of all sins, which, variously coloured and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... that the examination questions are irrelevant to the work of the office is often made the occasion of gross exaggeration. I have given, in Appendix I, an average sample of the examination papers used in the customs service. It is taken from Comstock's Civil Service in the United States, New York, Holt & Co., 1885, an excellent manual with very ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... proclamation, which from one end to the other offends against truth. It has been published in many works. The season of the year for hostile landing is there very dexterously placed in the foreground; all the rest is a deceitful exaggeration. It must be observed that the proclamations which Bonaparte regarded as calculated to dazzle an ever too credulous public were amplifications often ridiculous and incomprehensible upon the spot, and which only excited the laughter of men of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the inner life of the people in the Heian epoch, we may say with little fear of exaggeration that the most notable thing was the increase of superstition. This was due in part at least to the growth in Japan of the power of Buddhism, and, be it understood, of Buddhism of a degraded and debased form. The effort to combine Buddhism and Shinto probably robbed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... attitude of mind. To those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated; in the vast mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom there is no difficulty in finding expressions which are exaggerated; but it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love is to exaggerate the forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on reflection, an error to judge by the exaggeration rather than by the love. It is perhaps well to ask ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... be an exaggeration to say that more of Apuleius' works have perished than survived. He has told us in the Florida (20) that he has written dialogues, hymns, music, history, and satire. And we have copious references to works from his pen, that, perhaps fortunately, no longer ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... wifely trust she could not bear to seem to question the use he made of his time and thought; and a delicate moral scruple warned her she might easily allow her dislike of the Wendover friendship to lead her into exaggeration ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the probable date of the return of the mistress of the domain. Sir Morton Pippitt at last got tired of talking scandal for which there seemed no visible or tangible foundation, and even his daughter Tabitha began to wonder whether after all there was not some exaggeration in the story Lord Roxmouth had given her to sow like rank seed upon the soil of daily circumstance? She never saw Walden by any chance,—on one occasion she ventured to call, but he was 'out' as usual. Neither could she persuade ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... soul. He would have told any sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark—zeal for souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science. All this was gross exaggeration, but in him it was quite truthful, for he really thought so. He had the run of Mark's room, and they took turns to smoke in each other's bedrooms, so as to take turns in bearing the rector's observations ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... station in the gallery, at either end, and looks upon that wondrous nave, or who surveys the matchless panorama around him from the intersection of the nave and transept, may be said, without presumption or exaggeration, to see all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. He sees not only a greater collection of fine articles, but also a greater as well as more various assemblage of the human race, than ever before was gathered under ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... otherwise good lesson. The form of the question is thus a big factor in gaining a ready response. All the qualities which gain involuntary attention can be used in framing an interesting question—novelty, exaggeration, contrast, life, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... marquis fancied that all this might be only an exaggeration of the simple facts which he already knew; but Madame de Valricour had said nothing to him of having been at St. Sulpice, nothing about an actual marriage, nothing about a lettre de cachet even against ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... those in opulent circumstances finding some difficulty at Madrid in procuring admission into respectable society, where, if they find their way, they are invariably the objects of ridicule, from the absurd airs and grimaces in which they indulge,—their tendency to boasting and exaggeration, their curious accent, and the incorrect manner in which they speak and pronounce the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... is the effect of wasted cleverness, that it disheartens a man who, knowing that his abilities are less, finds the achievement of cleverer men so poor in what satisfies the artist of feeling. In it I saw an exaggeration of Pyne's defects and the caricature of his good qualities. Creswick had a better feeling for nature, but convention in his methods gave place to trick, and I remember his showing me the way in which he produced detail ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Daudet reappeared in Paris, greatly strengthened and ripened by his hermit-existence in the heart of Provence. He produced one masterpiece after another. He had studied with laughter and joy the mirthful side of southern exaggeration, and he created a figure in which its peculiar qualities should be displayed, as it were, in excelsis. This study resulted, in 1872, in "The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of Tarascon," one of the most purely delightful ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... Madagascar—a traffic which is the slave-trade in all but the name. The French flag is sullied by being allowed to be used by slaving dhows—an iniquity owing to which our brave Captain Brownrigg met his death not long ago. Is it any exaggeration to say that an increase of French influence in these seas is one ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, kings, lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... so desirous were the Egyptians of preserving, the aristocratic distinction of the color of their skin, that they represented themselves on the monuments as of a crimson hue—an exaggeration ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... Naturphilosophie into comparative anatomy, that is to say, that philosophy one of whose doctrines it is to seek after the signification of organs in the scale of organised beings." This is, however, an exaggeration, for Geoffroy was primarily a morphologist, whereas the morphology of the German transcendentalists was only a side-issue of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... caliph's attention was also more especially called to the fertility of Egypt, as Amron, at his pressing demand for provisions, sent such an immense caravan, that the Arabian writers, with their usual exaggeration, declare, that the convoy was so numerous as to extend the whole way from Medina to Cairo; the first camel of the train entering the Holy City with its load, as the last of the uninterrupted line quitted Misr. The descriptions of the abundance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... Trocadero, they one day watched the duel, when the guns at Meudon were replying vigorously to the fire of the forts, "I must modify my first opinions as to the courage of the Communists. They have learnt to fight, and allowing for all the exaggeration and bombast of their proclamations, they now stand admirably; they have more than once retaken positions from which they have been driven, and although very little is said about their losses, I was talking yesterday to a surgeon in one of the hospitals, and he tells me that already ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... horrid and inconceivable profundity of the bottomless pit! What signifies it, to object to his language as "unintelligible" if it conveys his idea better than any other could? In no human conception of what is infinite, can there be any real exaggeration. To amplify beyond the truth, is here impossible. Nor is there any superlation which can fix a limit to the idea of more and more in infinitude. Whatever literal absurdity there may be in it, the duplication ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... began to lose sight of the higher interests and happiness of his people, and to reign not for them but for himself. He became a man of resentments, of caprices, of undisguised selfishness; he became pompous and haughty and self-willed. We palliate his self-exaggeration and pride, on account of the disgraceful flatteries he received on every hand. Never was a man more extravagantly lauded, even by the learned. But had he been half as great as his courtiers made him think, he would not have been so intoxicated; Caesar or Charlemagne would not thus have lost ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... deep, it is quite impossible for a single man to pull it up. In the following theoretical case, the resistance would be as the cube of the depth; but in sand or shingle, the increase is less rapid. It varies under different circumstances; but it is no exaggeration to estimate its increase as seldom less than as the square of the depth. The theoretical case of which I spoke, is this:—Let x be part of a layer of shingle of wide extent: the shingle is supposed to consist of smooth hard spherical balls, all of the same size. Let s be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... been its place of origin and its stronghold in time of adversity. Certainly, although it was common all over the plains, I never saw in any place such a dense and vigorous growth of it, covering like an alfalfa field solid blocks of hundreds of acres. This is no exaggeration. It had killed a few of our cattle in Arizona and ruined some of our best horses. The Scotch Company lost many hundreds of cattle by it, and also some horses. The plant seems to flourish in cycles of about seven years; that is, though some of it may ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... common fault of biographers to over-colour the character of a favourite hero, but those who knew Sir William Heathcote will admit that there is no exaggeration in what I have said. He was the highest product of a class and school of thought which is fast disappearing, and which will perhaps find few representatives in the next generation. With change of time comes also change of men; and the statesmen and politicians of the new ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... before Parliament, and I dare say would have done it, only they hadn't time to come to me, and I hadn't power to go to them, and they got tired of my long letters, and dropped the business. And this is God's truth, without one word of suppression or exaggeration, as fifty people, both in this place and out of it, very ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... a character, that it was evident that the one party or the other must be destroyed. We have M. Guizot's authority for saying that in French political contests no quarter is ever given, and that the vanquished become as the dead. French history shows that there is no exaggeration in this statement, and that every political leader in France must fight for his life as well as for his post, the loss of the latter placing the former in great peril. This is a characteristic of French politics to which sufficient attention has not been paid, in discussing the morality of French ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... work of the Rev. J. Robertson in the field, it is unnecessary to write, as the newspaper correspondents have referred so often to his bravery and splendid services. One correspondent writes to me: "It is no exaggeration to say that the whole of Methuen's army, and especially the Highland Brigade, deem his bravery worthy of the V.C. Everywhere, in train or camp, officers' mess or soldiers' tent, Padre Robertson is proclaimed a hero." I was pleased to notice in the Record (the Church of England ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... While his boast about being equal to any monkey that ever lived among the treetops may have been a bit of an exaggeration, all the same Jack was a very good athlete, and especially with regard to feats on the parallel bars or the ladders in ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost point of sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or contrast; loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it; grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint; throws us back upon the past, forward into the future; brings every moment of our being or object of nature in startling review before us; ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... intended to convey the impression that there was no loss of time on Sedgwick's part. On the contrary, he might certainly have been more active in some of his movements. No doubt there were other general officers who would have been. But it is no exaggeration to insist that his dispositions were fully as speedy as those of any other portion of the army ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... him the exaggeration of vital properties and consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... have great confidence in the pacific sentiments of the Emperor William, in spite of the too frequent exaggeration of some of his gestures. He will not allow himself to be drawn on farther than he chooses by the exuberant temperament and clumsy manners of his very intelligent Minister of Foreign Affairs (Kiderlen-Waechter). I feel, in general, ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... ruinous wooden fence, of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be a garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was now infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations and out-buildings that stood on another street. It would be an omission, trifling indeed, but ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... of reverence for his superiors held him back from promotion—and another thing was his imperious temper. He could not bear contradiction. The orator's habit of exaggeration was upon him, and occasionally he would affront his best friends in a way that tested their patience to the breaking-point. "You might become an Abbot, and even a Bishop, were it not for your lack of courtesy," wrote his Superior to him ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... in spring, the trees flower, it is as though fleeciest masses of cloud faintly tinged by sunset had floated down from the highest sky to fold themselves about the branches. This comparison is no poetical exaggeration; neither is it original: it is an ancient Japanese description of the most marvellous floral exhibition which nature is capable of making. The reader who has never seen a cherry-tree blossoming in Japan cannot possibly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... Saint-Severin), the churches dominated the whole; and, like one harmony more in this mass of harmonies, they pierced in quick succession the multiple open work of the gables with slashed spires, with open-work bell towers, with slender pinnacles, whose line was also only a magnificent exaggeration of the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... me. He stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I wasn't—unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it I thought it was simply—I did indeed, Mrs Lawford—a monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it; shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I could have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford than—well, I won't repeat what particular word occurred to me. But there,' the corpulent shrug was almost audible, 'we all ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... were there in August, but the place is untouched—except for one house. That house, a large one, standing in a park at one end of the village, was the birth-place and home of General Lyautey, one of France's best soldiers, and Germany's worst enemy in Africa. It is no exaggeration to say that last August General Lyautey, by his promptness and audacity, saved Morocco for France. The Germans know it, and hate him; and as soon as the first soldiers reached Crevic—so obscure and imperceptible a spot that even German omniscience might have missed ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... warm! And before I withdrew my finger from the rough brown coat I was confident that I felt a throb like a pulse heave ITS sides. It is not an exaggeration to say that I was faint with excitement as I replaced the wrappings. I had never heard of Pygmalion and his statue. It was thirty years thereafter before I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. When I did read it I could not ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... public issues the paper took up was an attack on the railroad company in regard to the old bridge spanning the Missouri River at Chamberlain. "Every time a shower comes up, that bridge goes out," declared The Wand, and it wasn't much of an exaggeration. The homesteaders were dependent on the bridge to get immigrant goods across, and with the heavy rains that season many settlers had been delayed in getting on their land or in getting ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... in discussing the exaggerations from which a careful study of the Oriental religions would doubtless save us, says, "There is one against which we are almost unwilling to say a word. I mean the exaggeration of those who, in a deep devotion to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, count themselves bound, by their allegiance to Him, to take up a hostile attitude to everything not distinctly and avowedly Christian, as though any other position were a treachery to his cause, and a surrender of his exclusive ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... sleep may be looked upon as an exaggeration of ordinary night sleep, the latter differing from the former only in its brevity. In the natural sleep of non-hibernating species there occurs, too, a fall in temperature. Moreover, they all, even man, have a certain capacity for winter ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... from Rabelais as well as resembles him. Whereas Rabelais is simply monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits himself loyally to law. Give Swift his world of Liliput and Brobdingnag respectively, and all, after that, is quite natural and probable. The reduction or the exaggeration is made upon a mathematically calculated scale. For such verisimilitude Rabelais cares not a straw. His various inventions are recklessly independent one of another. A characteristic of Swift thus ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... more civilized nations of Sabellians and Etruscans. The celebrated Latin comic poet Statius Caecilius, who died in 586, was a manumitted Insubrian; and Polybius, who visited these districts towards the close of the sixth century, affirms, not perhaps without some exaggeration, that in that quarter only a few villages among the Alps remained Celtic. The Veneti, on the other hand, appear to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... hereafter to teach, others should be directed; so that they shall learn to regard language as one of the chiefest organs of their own education and that of others. For I am persuaded that I have used no exaggeration in saying, that for many a young man 'his first discovery that words are living powers, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another sense, or the introduction into ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... in imagination and fancy to some of the later works; but there was continued and steady growth in them on the side of humor, observation, and character, while freshness and raciness of style continued to be an important help. There are faults of occasional exaggeration in the writing, but none that do not spring from animal spirits and good humor, or a pardonable excess, here and there, on the side of earnestness; and it has the rare virtue, whether gay or grave, of being always thoroughly intelligible and for the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... madness which had distorted and disgraced the years since the Parnell Split could no longer continue their vicious courses. The return of Mr O'Donnell had focussed the attention of all Ireland on the programme and policy of the League. Branches multiplied amazingly, until it would be no exaggeration to say that they spread through the country like wildfire. The heather was ablaze with the joy of a resurgent people who had already almost forgotten the weary wars that had sundered them and who blissfully ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... Misenum, and after refreshing ourselves as best we could, spent a night of anxiety in mingled hope and fear. Fear, however, was still the stronger feeling; for the trembling of the earth continued, while many frenzied persons, with their terrific predictions, gave an exaggeration that was even ludicrous to the calamities of themselves and of their friends. Even then, in spite of all the perils which we had experienced, and which we still expected, we had not a thought of going away till we could ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... enjoyed under Liberal rule a period of prosperous tranquillity, favourable both to development and consolidation; and it is no exaggeration to say that it was never more strong or more peacefully united than at the present moment. The confidence which the whole country, irrespective of party, feels in Sir Edward Grey in the present European crisis, is the measure ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... only His main function but His only function. "I am all right," is the unspoken thought in many a heart, "so long as I am not overtaken by the Will of God. When that calamity falls on me my poor little human happiness will be wrecked like a skiff in a cyclone." This is not an exaggeration. It is the secret mental attitude of perhaps ninety percent of those Caucasians who believe in a God of any kind. Their root-conviction is that if God would only let them alone they would get along well enough; but as a terrible avenging ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... character of sin is plainly pointed out. The devices of Satan are laid bare with unsparing hand. The abominations of vice are not concealed. All this is done in language well chosen and unexceptionable. The Christian life is pictured without cant or exaggeration. The beauty and blessedness of a devoted life are eloquently portrayed. True religion with its present comforts and its great rewards is presented in a most attractive form, and the contrast between the worlding and the faithful Christian, here and ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... the least exaggeration, gave so advantageous an account of the extent of the kingdom of Persia, its magnificence and riches, its military force, its commerce by sea and land with the most remote parts of the world, some of which were unknown even to him; the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... them. When Tempest said something to her in the course of the careless conversation round the breakfast table, she answered—and had no sense of constraint. Thus, an incident that in other surroundings would have been in some way harmful through receiving the exaggeration of undue emphasis, caused less stir than the five huge and fiery mosquito bites Eshwell had got in the night. And Susan unconsciously absorbed one of those lessons in the science and art of living that have ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... on to the town-hall. The clerk made out a formal summons, and the charge was preferred against me, with the customary exaggeration and the customary perversion of the truth on such occasions. The magistrate (an ill-tempered man, with a sour enjoyment in the exercise of his own power) inquired if any one on or near the road had witnessed the assault, and, greatly to my surprise, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... "Gross exaggeration, my love. I could never get you to take a respectable holiday, for just as I was beginning to enjoy my liberty as a grass-widower, you would bob up serenely with 'No, you don't' on every line of your rosy face. It was worth anything, however, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... all this training? The consequence is, that either the Catholic children become ashamed of their holy religion, and despise their parents, or, if they have the courage to hold out, their tender minds are subject to numberless petty annoyances; they must endure a species of martyrdom. This is no exaggeration; I have it from good authority. Practically speaking, the present common school system is but a gigantic scheme for proselytism and ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... by profession, in their zeal to justify their pride in their work, are not content with maintaining its necessity; they allow themselves to be carried away into an exaggeration of its merit and importance. It has been said that the sure methods of external criticism have raised history to the dignity of a science, "of an exact science;" that critical investigations of authorship "enable us, better than any other study, to gain a profound insight ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... sentiment. His characters are so true that at first we are inclined to consider them commonplace. In their development, however, we soon find that the author is a master in his art, that without pretension and without exaggeration, he touches profound springs of thought and sentiment, and represents with a graceful decision, and in clear light, those evanescent and unconscious transpirations of character, in which a novelist's capacity is most ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... this discovery of the natural law for the human class of life, the solution of her life long search, and who, because of her interest in my work, has given me incomparably inspiring help and valuable criticism. It is not an exaggeration to state that except for her steady and relentless work and her time, which saved my time, this book could not have been produced in such a ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... over-vivid imagination. In this, they reminded me much of the Spaniards and the Italians. Their perception seems to be so keen that frequently they see more than really is visible. They are much given to exaggeration, not only in what they say, but also in their representations in painting and sculpture. In the matters both of conversation and of drawing, the same ideas will be found in Cho-sen to repeat themselves constantly, more or less cleverly expressed, according ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... possession of by its first proprietor, it was fairly carpeted and festooned all around and about with the wild-rose vine—dwelt one Gabriel Mayo, a gentleman of fortune, taste, and culture. He had a family of fair daughters, of whom old Charles Dubarry, with his national gallantry and proneness to exaggeration, had said, that 'they were all the most beautiful girls in the world, and each one more beautiful ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... are confronted with a new mystery, which has features so remarkable, that it would not be an exaggeration to describe this crime as the Murder Mystery of the Century. A well-known figure in London Society, Mr. Thornton Lyne, head of an important commercial organisation, a poet of no mean quality, and a millionaire ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... expressing himself. Deullin was there, too, one of Guynemer's oldest and most devoted friends. Last of all descended from the high regions sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz, a rather heavy man with a serious face, and more maturity than belonged to his years, an unassuming young man with a hatred for exaggeration and a deep respect for ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... discovered that the Portuguese had measured it at Tete, and found it a little over one thousand yards. At the falls it is as broad as at Tete, if not more so. Whoever may come after me will not, I trust, find reason to say I have indulged in exaggeration.* With respect to the drawing, it must be borne in mind that it was composed from a rude sketch as viewed from the island, which exhibited the columns of vapor only, and a ground plan. The artist has given ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... distance with his face to the enemy, firing as he withdrew. We all did the last, indeed, using the trees for covers. Towards the close we attracted especial attention; and there were two or three minutes during which the flight of bullets around us might truly, without much exaggeration, be likened to a ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... of perfect liberty. I could engage, however, to furnish at least two articles on Novalis and Koerner. I trust you will be interested in my favorite Koerner. Great is my love for both of them. But I wish to write something which shall not only be free from exaggeration, but which shall seem so, to those unacquainted ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli



Words linked to "Exaggeration" :   figure, deception, misrepresentation, increase, trope, exaggerate, figure of speech, image, understatement, step-up, deceit



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