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More "Exaggeration" Quotes from Famous Books



... had said that she would not let him go. Suppose then that he went and told her mother the story. There would be one more person in the secret, for though she might die of grief, she would never tell a human being; she could not ever be called upon to do so, by the maddest exaggeration of the principles of honour. She would suffer horribly, but she would not take what was hers. She could have no use for the fortune, except to give it to her daughter, who had the use of it already. Her peace would be destroyed for ever, and there would be no change in the conditions ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... because I don't believe it. The philosophy of Indian warfare is, to kill your enemy and not get killed yourself, and they can take cover more skillfully than any other people. In all our Indian wars, from the Atlantic westward, with regulars or militia, I believe it would not be an exaggeration to say that the whites have lost ten to one in killed and wounded. But the battle of Wood Lake was quite an open fight, and so rapidly conducted and concluded that we have a very accurate account of the loss of the enemy. He had no time or opportunity to withdraw ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... the first books about fighting in the air, is written by a fighting airman. The author depicts the daily life of the flying officer in France, simply and with perfect truth; indeed he describes heroic deeds with such moderation and absence of exaggeration that the reader will scarcely realise that these stories are part of the annals of a squadron which for a time held a record in the heaviness ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... the time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent imaginary,—altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single military engagement had taken place;—the artist had "flushed to anticipate the scene." In these prints the Russians were depicted as fleeing in utter ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... forget it."—Jagor, Viajes por Filipinas (Vidal's Spanish version). Jagor was speaking particularly of the settled parts of the Bicol region. Referring to the islands generally, his "half of the children" would be a great exaggeration.—TR. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... graces. He seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to every such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly as the sun belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which he found ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... 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, "See the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled. Most assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... Christians of other Churches, earnestly and lovingly endeavouring to create as many points of contact as were compatible with holding fast the truth. The errors of all religions run into each other, just as their truths do. There was, no doubt, some exaggeration in the statement of the Roman Catholic authority who declared that "there is but one bad religion, and that is the religion of the man who professes what he does not believe." But there was no reason why, because the Church of England had ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... cannot forget how the majority and the minority in this House were composed; I cannot forget that the majority contained almost all those gentlemen who are returned by large bodies of electors. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that there were single Members of the majority who had more constituents than the whole minority put together. I speak advisedly and seriously. I believe that the number of freeholders of Yorkshire exceeds that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the round world were discovered, at thy chiding, O Lord: at the blasting of the breath of thy displeasure. He shall send down from on high to fetch me: and shall take me out of many waters.' What protects such words from the imputation of mere Eastern exaggeration? The firm conviction that God is the deliverer, not only of David, but of all who trust in God; that the whole majesty of God, and all the powers of nature, are arrayed on the side of the good and of the oppressed. 'The Lord shall reward me after ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... of ornament and extreme simplicity of style, and the evident intention on the part of the translator to suppress all that may not have appeared to him sufficiently probable, and all that might justly be taxed with exaggeration;" and he adds that "apart from the interest which the writing and phraseology of the work may possess for those who study the history of languages, it is rather curious to see how a Tatar translator sets to work to bring within the range of his readers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... stoic school produced the lofty characters of Cremutius Cordus, Thraseas, Arria, Helvidius Priscus, Annaeus Cornutus, and Musonius Rufus, admirable masters of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and exaggeration of this school arose from the horrible cruelty of the Caesars. The continual thought of a good man was how to inure himself to suffering, and prepare himself for death. Lucian, in bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, but gave utterance to the loftiest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... as men in high office have very often pacified the anger of their princes; but by untimely opposition and reproof, did often excite him the more to frenzy; often also informing Augustus of his actions, and that too with exaggeration, and taking care, I know not with what intention, that what he did should not be unknown to the emperor. And at this Caesar soon became more vehemently exasperated, and, as if raising more on high than ever the standard of his contumacy, without any regard to the safety of others or of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the drill sergeant on his job, it seemed to him that he had never seen a soldier work before. In figure, in pose, in action there was a perfection about him that awakened at once admiration and envy. Below the average height, yet not insignificant, erect, without exaggeration, precise in movement without angularity, swift in action without haste, he was indeed a joy ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... the deceptive appearance which nature sometimes assumes, the exaggeration, almost unavoidable, by partially informed observers, of the details of a phenomenon, or its duration; improper, ill-understood, or badly translated expressions, figurative language, and a practical style; erroneous explanations of emblematical ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... Overestimation. — N. overestimation &c. v.; exaggeration &c. 549; vanity &c. 880; optimism, pessimism, pessimist. much cry and little wool, much ado about nothing; storm in a teacup, tempest in a teacup; fine talking. V. overestimate, overrate, overvalue, overprize, overweigh, overreckon[obs3], overstrain, overpraise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... considerable scene. The idealist driven into squalid actualities deserves a martyr's crown. In one single misfortune he suffers all the calamities of the human race, and in one personal horror he sees the death, emptiness, and corruption of all human endeavours. In this exaggeration, these mystics show their genius; they suffer too much in order that ordinary people may suffer a little less. Poor Orange! He is certainly fine, for, even if I discard the mannerisms, the eccentricity, the possibly natural self-sufficiency, all that is essential in his character ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... again decoyed into the society of ladies and gentlemen, and have accepted an invitation to pass a few days at Neesdale Park with Mr. Travers,—christened Leopold, who calls you "his old friend,"—a term which I take for granted belongs to that class of poetic exaggeration in which the "dears" and "darlings" of conjugal intercourse may be categorized. Having for that visit no suitable garments in my knapsack, kindly tell Jenkes to forward me a portmanteau full of those which I habitually wore as Kenelm ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that the inspired writers had themselves written in English. It was forgotten that they were Orientals, who wrote in the language natural to them, with the customary grandiloquence of orientalism, with the poetic exaggeration which, in the East, was the breath of life. It was forgotten also that they wrote in ignorance of those natural truths which men had now acquired by experience and induction, and not by revelation. Their truth was the truth of heaven, not the truth of earth. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... man, and the sweat streamed down his face as he stood under the blazing sun to sketch a fearful picture of the monstrous doom which was hanging over the city and its inhabitants. He spoke with pompous exaggeration, in a shrill, harsh voice, wiping his face meanwhile with his white linen robe or gasping for air, when breath failed him, like a fish stranded on the beach. All this, however, did not trouble his audience, for the hatred that inspired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Recorder that it had been the duke's intention to seize the Tower and the Isle of Wight, and to "have destroyed the city of London and the substantiall men of the same."(1346) This was, of course, an exaggeration, although there is little doubt that the duke was preparing to get himself named again Protector by the next parliament. On the 1st December he was brought from the Tower by water to Westminster, the mayor and aldermen having received strict orders to keep the city well guarded.(1347) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... glass necessary for each one. It reveals the defects in the accommodation, and serves for the quick determination of refraction. So, in saying that this little instrument is very ingenious and very practical, Dr. Javal has used no exaggeration.—La Nature. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... such, within the bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, to speak of the Boke Named the Governour as the very Magna Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the end that the student ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... your Lordship's consideration. I am quite conscious that the outlines I have drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of the feelings they are intended to illustrate; but I claim for them one merit—their truth and freedom from exaggeration. I may have fallen short of the mark, but I have never overshot it: and while I have pointed out what appears to me, to be injustice on the part of others, I hope I have carefully ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... we ascended to the top of a high hill, and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration to set it down at 200,000." Steven's Narrative and Final Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific, vol ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... the shot which opened the battle of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... of humane societies condemning all vivisection is due to the exaggeration of a good sentiment and to ignorance of first principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must explain what a right is and how men ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... no exaggeration. At sight of the gipsy band, the child so recently taken from their clutches shrank and cowered against ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... of wonderful stories but I shall mention only two here which, though evidently not free from exaggeration, will give an idea of what the people came to regard him as capable of achieving, and also of the powers and attributes which he used to ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... gold-seekers of the present day are literary men, for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen; but at the time we speak of, almost the whole tribe were authors. Borel, in 1654, makes the list amount to 4000; but this is an exaggeration; many of his names being imaginary, and some cut into several pieces. We have before us, however, a catalogue by a less zealous compiler, brought between eighty and ninety years further down, containing about 2500 treatises by about 900 authors—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... That was exaggeration, of course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... seen it passing by in the street what age would she have guessed its owner to be? Something in the thirties; but perhaps in the late thirties? She wasn't quite certain about it. Really it is so difficult to look at yourself quite impartially. And she did not wish to fall into exaggeration, to be hypercritical. She wished to be strictly reasonable, to see herself exactly as she was. The eyes were brilliant, but did they look ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... whose growth has been retarded by poor soil and contracted space. Her lips had taken on a smiling upward curve that gave a new expression to her face, and now her frequent laugh was spontaneous and contagious. Her humor was of the western flavor—droll exaggeration—a little grim, while in her unexpected turns of speech, Prentiss found a constant ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... and noiselessly about the room. His miserable, thin legs and the gown of his dress stood out stiff and straight as he turned quickly. And—most horrible of all—he had for a head the skull of a large white bird with a long beak, which was a monstrous exaggeration of a sea-mew's skull, bleached by the sun and wind and waves, that I had the previous summer found upon the beach at the Island. (I believe this old man's visit coincided with the time when I was worst, almost in danger.) After he had ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... the cold stone under the stranger's porch, these two orphans: Philip's arms round his brother's waist, Sidney leaning on his shoulder, and imparting to him—perhaps with pardonable exaggeration, all the sufferings he had gone through; and, when he came to that morning's chastisement, and showed the wale across the little hands which he had vainly held up in supplication, Philip's passion shook him from limb to limb. His impulse was to march straight ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... course, a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason of their ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... rather than grapple with hideous concrete problems—this has been the tendency of the religious spirit in all ages, a tendency of which positive asceticism, with its mortification of the body, and its ideal of virginity, and marriage regarded as more or less a concession to the flesh, is only an exaggeration. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... read the foregoing remarks, and in which there is not the least exaggeration or departure from the truth, will imagine, doubtless, that the modern ecclesiastical authorities of the peninsula have, at least, attempted to rectify all that is absurd and irreverent in those practices, and to strip a ceremony so august and imposing as that of the mass of all that a want ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... crowning work of his long life of public service. His style is of that best kind which is never remarked upon, but serves as a clear medium through which the events he portrays are seen without distortion or exaggeration. He has done his country one more service in entire consistency with those that have filled up the whole course of his honorable and beneficent life. We have said that this is fit to be the crowning work of Mr. Giddings's life; but we trust that it is far from being the last that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,—extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling,—in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition—the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital—from every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... result of the family feud between the two dynasties. That came to an end in 1868, when the murder of Kara-George in 1817 by the agency of Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c] was avenged by the lunatic assassination of the brilliant Prince Michael Obrenovi['c] III. It is no exaggeration to say that, from the point of view of the Serbian patriot, the only salvation of his country in 1903 lay in getting rid of the Obrenovi['c] dynasty, which had become pro-Austrian, had no longer the great gifts possessed by its earlier members, and undoubtedly ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... obtained by the close approximation to the straight line in the lateral ribs of the leaf, fig. 12. The longer the eye rests on these temperate curvatures the more it will enjoy them, but it will assuredly in the end be wearied by the morbid exaggeration of the last example. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... sand the man was sieving. "I will when I grow up," the undisturbed child replied. "I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!" And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter "Oh, pull down ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... development, combined with its undoubted docility and aptitude for comprehending signs, have led to exaggerated ideas of its intelligence, which probably does not exceed that of the horse, and is far inferior to that of the dog. But from time immemorial it has been surrounded by a halo of romance and exaggeration. Mr. Sanderson says, however, that the natives of India never speak of it as an intelligent animal, "and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom, as do the fox, the crow, and the monkey;" but he overlooks the fact that the Hindu god of wisdom, Gunesh, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... father was pressed for ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements—all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth—were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to a young man of Osborne's age to feel himself continually hampered for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the liberal—almost luxurious table at the Hall, came off the estate; so ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... of the speaker, the incomprehensible change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence. The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part of the dwelling by the distant gale became perceptible. An angry flash sprang ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... a 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 common sense. In all Bonaparte's correspondence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... wings of a bat. Owen describes one whose sweep of wings exceeded twenty feet, and many have been found of every gradation of size down to that of a bat. There is no reason why they should not be as large as More says; and I for my part do not suspect him of exaggeration. Some have supposed that a late, lingering individual may have suggested the idea of the fabulous dragon—an idea which seems to be in the minds of nearly all the human race, for in the early records ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... 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 a dynasty whose gray beard hangs over a well-crimped ruff. I saw a ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... years ago, the front gable was now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a 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 ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... morbid ideas, my dear fellow!" said Lavendar in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's trouble enough in the world without foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was 'grave-ripe,' as she often said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The doctor's certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her heart, and the neighbours would very soon set your mind at rest by describing the number of times poor old ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... hall while its roof echoed the jingling tail-piece of another popular ditty, which tickled Beatrice's fancy hugely. In it the singer expressed, without exaggeration and without flattery, a good deal of the popular London attitude toward the pursuit of pleasure and the love of pleasure resorts. I recall phrases like: "Give my regards to Leicester Square—Greet the girls in Regent ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... enthusiastic a eulogy of his beloved nurse and preserver that more than once Lady Wendula, smiling, stopped him, accusing him of permitting his grateful heart to lead him to such exaggeration that the maiden he wished to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... no journal during a greater portion of the time in which I was absent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when detailing events which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. Another reason was, that the incidents to be narrated were of a nature ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... week had passed, the four room-mates were together in their old rooms, and Marion was made a heroine. All she had done for Nellie was exaggerated, with that generous exaggeration of which girls ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... in hypnosis this condition is artificially increased. (c) Suggestion explains all. Despite the fact that the members of the Nancy school regard the condition as purely physiological and simply an exaggeration of the normal, they consider it, in its profound stages at all ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... than his own transgressions, after such a bringing up as his, and would his mother say that nobody 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 ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... December 23, and note. The reader will observe the tone of exaggeration in the letter as compared ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... is, the scene holds and haunts one with an impression of absolute truth, For the end, marked like all by an almost grim avoidance of sentimentality, I shall only refer you to the book itself. After reading it you will, I hope, not think me guilty of exaggeration when I call it, slight though it is, one for which its author has deserved well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... gratuities, &c., till he had received his dress of investiture, and had merely promised to pay what his predecessor had paid—that when about to set out, the memorandum of what his predecessor had paid was put into his hand, and it was then too late to remonstrate or draw back. There may be some exaggeration in the rate of the gratuities demanded; but that he has to pay them to the persons named I have no doubt whatever, because; all men in charge of districts have to pay them to those persons, whether they hold the districts ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... decisions. Marx Leva, Forrestal's assistant, told the story of a Forrestal subordinate who complained that some admirals were still opposed to naval aviation, to which Forrestal replied that he knew some admirals who still opposed steam engines.[9-1] Forrestal's humorous exaggeration underscored the tenacity of traditional attitudes in the Navy. Although self-interest could never be discounted as a motive, tradition also figured prominently, for example, in the controversy between proponents of the battleship and proponents of the aircraft ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... course until it came very chose to her. She had a sober mode of statement and criticism, which was never brilliant and never stupid. It ought to have been most serviceable to her husband, because it might have corrected the exaggeration into which his impulse, talent, and power of pictorial representation were so apt to fall. She had been brought up as an Evangelical, but she had passed through no religious experiences whatever, and religion, in the sense in which Evangelicalism ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... fate that led to the prompt capitulation of some two hundred survivors to a British charge. The remainder of the thousand men was practically all casualties from shell-bursts, which, granting some exaggeration in a prisoner's tale, illustrates what killing the guns may wreak if the target ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... admire them is probably akin to the feeling that has at all times rendered a white elephant an object of wonder to Asiatics. The rarity of the latter is accounted for by regarding this peculiar appearance as the result of albinism; and notwithstanding the exaggeration of Oriental historians, who compare the fairness of such creatures to the whiteness of snow, even in its utmost perfection, I apprehend that the tint of a white elephant is little else than a flesh-colour, rendered somewhat more conspicuous ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be clearly proved, because perhaps after all it may be only a providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture. Well, this is precisely what I had said, which the writer, who has given occasion to this Volume, considered so irrational. I had said, as he quotes me, "In this day, and under our present circumstances, we can only ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... 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 ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... usual with girls of fourteen. She first drew our attention to the view by one of her strong, eloquent bursts of eulogium; and Lucy met the remark with a truthful, simple answer, that showed abundant sympathy with the sentiment, though with less of exaggeration of manner and feeling, perhaps. I seized the moment as favourable for my ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... Is this poetic exaggeration? Surely not: Victor Hugo spoke truly. Algebra, the poem of order, has magnificent flights. I look upon its formulae, its strophes as superb, without feeling at all astonished when others do not agree. My colleague's satirical look ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess, noticing Kitty's devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of consolation. All this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... generally exalted either for thinking or not thinking; and as I am not aware of any medium between the active and passive state of our minds (except dreaming, which is still more unpardonable), the reader may suppose that there is no exaggeration in my previous calculation of one-third of my midshipman existence having been passed away upon "the high and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... "go"—it would be "little go" were they Cantabs—as the two undergraduates, young enough to be still up at College completing their education, yet old enough to propose and be accepted as eligible husbands. But in a rattling three-act farce as this is intended to be, any exaggeration is sufficiently probable as long only as it is thoroughly amusing; and, it be added, in such a piece, sentiment is as much out of place as would be plain matter-of-fact conduct or dialogue. To see Mr. PENLEY in the elderly Aunt's dress is to convulse the house ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various

... to sow, on properly prepared ground, the great essential in lawn-making is a proper kind of roller to use as occasion requires. Few people realize just how important a part a roller plays in the upkeep of any grass area, but it is no exaggeration to say that without one, successful results will be difficult if not impossible of achievement. Use a roller—a heavy roller—on your lawn early in the spring to repair the damage that the freezing and thawing has caused in ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue

... Loll's face quivered in his anxiety to convince her of the truth of his statements. Knowing the youngster's unconscious tendency toward exaggeration, she was doubtful. There could be no animal on the Island. But . . . to make sure . . . she herself would go ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... expression, or least of all, what we call understanding. The child distorts inevitably and dynamically. But the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. If a huge eye sits in the middle of the cheek, in a child's drawing, this shows that the deep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is the life-truth, even if it ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... the statement is misleading. Russian literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars—with few exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff—was unquestionably a vehicle for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to know, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... in prison; and when he contrasted his peaceful, pure, and Christian course those forty years of poverty, with his blasphemous and infidel career for the one bad week of wealth, he had no patience with himself—only felt his fall the greater; and his judgment of his own guilt, with a natural exaggeration, went the length of saying—I am scarcely less guilty before God and man, than if, indeed, my hands were red with murder, and my casual finding had been robbery. He would make no strong appeals to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... practice of using what is merely the history of human life as authority for human action now, or as prophecy, has produced or strengthened great evils in the world I readily admit, and I welcome all the thorough and searching criticism which can be applied to the Bible, but nothing is gained by exaggeration. There are noble examples of woman in the Old Testament of the heroic type, as in the New Testament of the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... the process, but the old fellow went at it with his tools and his nails, till he made us all as neat and as flat as a schoolroom bench. And see the results of his workmanship! A few rebels, like Herscher, who, from hatred of the conventional, go for exaggeration and ugliness, or like myself, who, thanks to that old ass, love roughness and contortion so much, that my sculpture, they say, is "like a bag of walnuts." And the rest of ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tannhauser, Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy. Very naive and very archaic indeed are Hans Sachs's dramas compared with Wagner's; but it is, perhaps, not an exaggeration to say that Sachs was as influential a factor in the dramatic life of his time as Wagner in ours. He was among the earliest of the German poets who took up the miracle plays and mysteries after they had been abandoned by the church and developed them on the lines ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... princes of Florence, Urbino, Ferrara, and other independent cities vied with Rome, Venice, and Naples in sumptuousness of ornament, and lavishness of expense, until the inevitable period of decline supervened in which exaggeration of ornament and prodigality of decoration gave the eye ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... with the last army of the Republic, turning sharply right and left, beat the Austrians, destroyed Suvaroff in the mountains of Switzerland about Zurich. Before the excitement had subsided, came a despatch from the depths of the Mediterranean, penned with Ossianic exaggeration by the greatest of political romanticists, in which was announced the destruction of a turbaned army of Turks at Aboukir by the irresistible demi-brigades of the old army of Italy. And then, suddenly, people ran out into the streets to be told that the man himself was in France; ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... Cyril, the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood. Even at present, there is scarcely a Roman Catholic cathedral which does not display some pretended pieces of this relic; and it has been computed, with some exaggeration, that were they all collected together, they might prove sufficient for building a ship of the line. To account for this extraordinary diffusion of so limited a quantity, the Catholic writers have been obliged to assert its preternatural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various

... them a vast array of really beautiful gems, which were tempting but high-priced. To say that, on an average, three of these men knocked at our door during the morning bath, while as many were waiting for us at the luncheon hour, literally camping out on the balcony during the evening hours, is no exaggeration. Then the cards they presented, the insinuations they indulged in with regard to the other man's goods (who was waiting outside)! It really was amusing, but it grew tiresome, and was demoralizing, because one was compelled to "bargain" if anything ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... exaggeration that high functionary after high functionary in the legislative or executive branches of the Government, and magnate after magnate had committed not only one violation, but constant violations, of the criminal law. They were unmolested; having ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... showers of stars which have been recorded, must be therefore considered as an accidental exaggeration of a perennial phenomenon, attaining its maximum when the earth passes through the central plane of the vortex, whose ascending node in 1833 we will suppose was in longitude 50d. This theory will therefore account for those ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... might almost gather therefrom how the first blackamoors came about. [Footnote: Micraelius also, in his "Ancient Pomerania" (vol. Ixxi. 2), mentions this circumstance, but only says:—"Those who came over to Stralsund were quite black from the hunger they had suffered." This accounts for the strange exaggeration of mine host, and the still stranger conclusion of our author.] But be that as it may. Summa. When Master Sehms had told us all the news he had heard, and we had thus learnt to our great comfort that the Lord had not visited us only in these times of heavy need, I called him ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... endeavoured to unite these opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished;—the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force; and by the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... with so much diligence that in 6 days eight or ten men did (in spite of difficulties which hindered them that we could go in that place but by canoes because of the rapidity & want of water that they had in the river) what others would have had trouble in doing in 6 months, without any exaggeration. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... of this information is to be found by taking it in conjunction with the recent puzzling reports of movements of the German High Seas Fleet. It will be remembered that the Fleet was represented in an enemy official report (with the customary exaggeration) as sweeping out into the North Sea. That was not readily believed, but it was generally felt that there must be something in it, especially as all manner of rumours of naval activity kept coming through from Scandinavia about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... yet she offered no assistance, until her mistress bade her attend to my toilet; then she obeyed, searching my face all the while from under her black eyelashes. Yet her singularity was probably an exaggeration of my own fancy, for she seems quiet and well-behaved, though a little sullen. I am glad she is not to be my attendant, for there is certainly an evil look in her eyes, whenever she regards me, and I could never ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... the image of her own management of her children reflected without exaggeration or distortion in this glass; and, as the former story shows how the freest indulgence is compatible with the maintenance of the most absolute authority, this enables us to see how a perpetual resistance to the impulses and desires of children may ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... (ii. 503) considers three thousand dinars (the figure in the Bres. Edit.) "a more probable sum." Possibly: but, I repeat, exaggeration is one of the many characteristics ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden furor which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... as medicine is concerned, I am not sure that physiology, such as it was down to the time of Harvey, might as well not have existed. Nay, it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that, within the memory of living men, justly renowned practitioners of medicine and surgery knew less physiology than is now to be learned from the most elementary text-book; and, beyond a few broad facts, regarded what they ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... our own facetious narratives about the wise men of Gotham, the old woman whose petticoats were cut short by the pedlar whose name was Stout, and a number of other inhabitants of Fool-land, to whom the heart of childhood is still closely attached, and also of the exaggeration-stories, the German Luegenmaehrchen, on which was founded the narrative of Baron Munchausen's surprising adventures. But instead of doing this, before passing on to the more important groups of the Skazkas, I will quote, as this chapter's final illustrations of the Russian story-teller's ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... raged without either party obtaining a decisive advantage. Notwithstanding his inferiority in numbers Ieyasu was completely victorious. The carnage was dreadful. The number of the confederate army said to have been killed was 40,000.(195) This seems like an impossible exaggeration, and the Japanese annalists are, like those of other nations, given to heightened statements. But that the loss of life on both sides was very great there ...
— Japan • David Murray

... that his views were diabolical; but, especially since that warning which I had from his wife, I discount everything that he says. He begins in earnest; but as he goes on the humour of exaggeration gets hold of him, and he winds up with things which he would never uphold in cold blood. However, the fact remains that we differ widely in our views of professional life, and I fear that we may come ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... colony feared that the market for this established staple of the American trade might be ruined. He brought with him also ore which he hoped an assay would prove to be gold, and he declared the country to be rich in copper. With some exaggeration, he announced explorations "into the country near two hundred miles" and the discovery of "a river navigable for great shippes one hundred and fifty miles." The adventurers responded by sending him out again, in October 1607, with 120 prospective settlers and ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... literature is made up of books which could have been better written by men—books which have the same relation to literature is general, as academic prize poems have to poetry: when not a feeble imitation, they are usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire. Few English women have written so much like a woman as Richardson's Lady G. Now we think it an immense mistake to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its incipient torpor; and the reaction against it—indifference and unbelief—failed not soon to appear. Even in the first Punic war (505) an instance ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... more of them family portraits," said Mr Roe with a wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of grammar—"than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... THE INTEREST IN SCIENCE. A very prominent feature of world educational development, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the general introduction into the schools of the study of science. It is no exaggeration of the importance of this to say that no addition of new subject-matter and no change in the direction and purpose of education, since that time, has been of greater importance for the welfare of mankind, or more significant of new world conditions, than has been ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... interest, the honor, the independence of the United States, and the faith of our engagements to France. If we listen to the clamor of party intemperance, the evils are of a number not to be counted, and of a nature not to be borne, even in idea. The language of passion and exaggeration may silence that of sober reason in other places, it has not done it here. The question here is, whether the treaty be really so very fatal as to oblige the nation to break its faith. I admit that such a treaty ought not to be executed. I admit ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... already said, his distinguishing excellence is vivid and natural description of the life and habits, not the opinions, of the people of the fourteenth century, described without exaggeration or effort for effect. He paints his age as Moliere paints the times of Louis XIV., and Homer the heroic periods of Grecian history. This fidelity to nature and inexhaustible humor and living freshness and perpetual ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... crack airman, who had worked for hours to do it, but the best machine we had at the 'drome where I learned flying would only do six thousand, and no one could get her up there under forty minutes. She was a fine machine, too, as machines went in those days. To-day it is no exaggeration to say that ten thousand feet above the earth is low to a flier. Everyone goes to twenty thousand continually, and many of the biggest fights take place from seventeen thousand to ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... looking at her with some curiosity during her speech, and quickly came to the conclusion that Kelson's description of her had certainly not erred on the side of exaggeration. She looked divinely handsome in her ball-dress of a darkish shade of blue, relieved by a bunch of roses in her corsage and a single diamond brooch. Statuesque, too statuesque, Kelson had called her; certainly her ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... September, 1863, we obtained possession, among other plunder, of quite a quantity of Confederate commissary stores. Among these was a copious supply of "jerked beef." It consisted of narrow, thin strips of beef, which had been dried on scaffolds in the sun, and it is no exaggeration to say that it was almost as hard and dry as a cottonwood chip. Our manner of eating it was simply to cut off a chunk about as big as one of our elongated musket balls, and proceed to "chaw." It was rather a comical sight to see us in our cabins of a cold winter night, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... 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 ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... reason to regret being separated from her husband, whose harsh treatment finally occasioned her death. But Johnstone appears not to be altogether untinctured with the prejudices of his clan, and is probably, in this instance, guilty of exaggeration; as the active share, taken by the Marquis of Hamilton in favour of Maxwell, is a circumstance inconsistent ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... are so very extraordinary, that were they not notorious, I should hardly have ventured to mention them, for fear of being suspected of exaggeration; but they are perfectly known in the country, by every body; having been published by authority in the news-papers at the time, with all their various details and specifications, for the information ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... sixteen, he had passed his youth in alternate pleasure, travel, and solitary study. At the age in which manhood is least susceptible to caprice, and most perhaps to passion, he fell in love with the loveliest person that ever dawned upon a poet's vision. I say this without exaggeration, for Gertrude Vane's was indeed the beauty, but the perishable beauty, of a dream. It happened most singularly to Trevylyan (but he was a singular man), that being naturally one whose affections it was very difficult to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he said; "and our proverbs, though made by men, express this truth with a sharpness in which there is little exaggeration. Our school textbooks tell us that action and reaction are equal and opposite; and this familiar phrase gives meaning to the saw, Pelmave dakal dake, 'She is equal, the thing struck to the hammer,' meaning that ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... Mrs Peagrim was not present and—a more disturbing discovery—that Otis Pilkington was. It would be exaggeration to say that Uncle Chris was embarrassed. That master-mind was never actually embarrassed. But his jauntiness certainly ebbed a little, and he had to pull his mustache twice before he could face the situation with his customary aplomb. He had not expected to find Otis Pilkington ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... Van-ta-gin to consist of eighteen hundred thousand men, one million of which were said to be infantry, and eight hundred thousand cavalry. As this government, however, is supposed to be much given to exaggeration in all matters relating to the aggrandisement of the country, and to deal liberally in hyperboles, wherever numbers are concerned, the authenticity of the above statement of their military force may perhaps be called ...
— 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

... carried on, by intervals and starts, it came to the ears of Richard that a nobleman of Limoges had found on his lands a considerable hidden treasure. The king, necessitous and rapacious to the last degree, and stimulated by the exaggeration and marvellous circumstances which always attend the report of such discoveries, immediately sent to demand the treasure, under pretence of the rights of seigniory. The Limosin, either because he had really discovered nothing or that he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... train placed in the street, pointing towards the building. The lower floor was used as an Exchange by the merchants, who were annoyed by being obliged daily to brush by the red-coats. All this was excessively irritating, and needed no exaggeration from abroad. Still it is but just to the men of that day to present all the circumstances under which they maintained their dignity. "Asiatic despotism," so says a contemporary London eulogy on their conduct, which was printed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... It is no exaggeration to say that from January 27, 1889, the Government of the Third French Republic was openly and visibly given up by night and by day to one great purpose alone—and that purpose was, not to glorify the 'principles of 1789,' not to celebrate the Republic—the grand statue of the Triumph ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... from my worthy furrier, almost every day, and with a fine exaggeration. This honest man was one of those who in virtue of their trade, and nicety of behaviour, are admitted into noble life, to take measurements, and show patterns. And while so doing, they contrive to acquire ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... so does the worship of other gods, even in the temple at Jerusalem. It has seemed to some great scholars that Israel, as a whole, was a heathen people up to the time of the exile, and still needed to be converted to the religion of Jehovah. Kuenen shows[1] in a convincing way that this is an exaggeration, and that people and prophets alike held the religion of Jehovah to be the true religion of Israel; but up to the exile that religion was not reformed in the way the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... additional and interesting particulars given by Ramusio, e.g. the use of the mixed breeds. "Finer than silk," is an exaggeration, or say an hyberbole, as is the following expression, "As big as elephants," even with Ramusio's apologetic quasi. Caesar says the Hercynian Urus was magnitudine paullo ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... considerable comment, but the well rounded cheeks of Mr. Bryan now check its outward march. No one has seen the real breadth of his smile who did not see it in the early days. Upon one occasion a heartless observer was heard to remark, 'That man can whisper in his own ear,' but this was a cruel exaggeration." ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... sportive ideal of human nature in the Old Comedy I have already shown. Now as the New Comedy had to give to its representation a resemblance to a definite reality, it could not indulge in such studied and arbitrary exaggeration as the old did. It was, therefore, obliged to seek for other sources of comic amusement, which lie nearer the province of earnestness, and these it found in a more accurate and thorough ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... always refuse that, sir." And therewith Mr. Ray was remanded to his quarters. Verily there was some reason for Blake's outburst when he came in after hearing Warner's brief description of the official interview which Mrs. Whaling had given in lurid exaggeration ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... a girl, has commissioned me to inquire about your new authoress, the writer of ——, who she is and all about her. For my part, I have not finished the book yet, and never shall. Besides my own utter dislike to its painfulness, its one-sidedness, and its exaggeration, I observe that the sort of popularity which it has obtained in England, and probably in America, is decidedly bad, of the sort which cannot and does not last,—a cry which is always essentially one-sided ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... a 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 ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... laughing friend judges of your circumstances more correctly than you do yourself. Because you are discharged, you say your honour is sullied; because you are wounded in the arm, you call yourself a cripple. Is that right? Is that no exaggeration? And is it my doing that all exaggerations are so open to ridicule? I dare say, if I examine your beggary that it will also be as little able to stand the test. You may have lost your equipage once, twice, or thrice; your deposits in the hands of this or that banker ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... averages, and assuredly not upon the accidents of exceptional luck. The instant objection will be, that such luck is not exceptional, but represents the ordinary case. Let us consider. The reports are probably much exaggerated; and something of the same machinery for systematic exaggeration is already forming itself as operated so beneficially for California. As yet, however, it is not absolutely certain that the reports themselves, taken literally, would exactly countenance the romantic impressions drawn from those ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... younger days took me into many malarious and unhealthy places. But a brother coleopterist like yourself is always a welcome guest, and I shall be delighted if you will look over my collection, which I think that I may without exaggeration describe as the best ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sheep-grazing, before we came to the lake, or sea, of which we were in search. When we arrived at it, we were disappointed to find it not more than six miles long, although the natives, with their usual amount of exaggeration, had increased it to an illimitable ocean. Before descending from the high land to the plain in which the lakes are situated, we caught a distant glimpse of what appeared to be a grand and broad river, pursuing a winding course through a magnificently wooded ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... both by individuals and by society, any discussion tending to strip it of its illusions and get at its real natural history is nervously discouraged. But nothing can well be more unwholesome for everybody than the exaggeration and glorification of an instinctive function which clouds the reason and upsets the judgment more than all the other instincts put together. The process may be pleasant and romantic; but the consequences are not. It would be far better for everyone, as well as ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... whole troop, that the cibolero could have put a considerable body of them to flight only by showing himself! But in addition to the skill, strength, and daring which he had in reality exhibited—in addition to the exaggeration of those qualities by the fancy—the soldiers as well as people had become possessed with a strange belief— that was, that the cibolero was under the protection of his mother— under the protection of the "diablo"—in other words, that he was bewitched, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is no exaggeration. Simon Legree stalks abroad unrebuked in the South, and Cassies with sad stories of betrayal and humiliation are plentiful." "I do not think it possible to better the black woman morally," said Mrs. Hill. "The germs of high and lofty thought are not ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... ill at ease; and, on the other hand, all the rules of female honor cannot prevent a certain sympathy with Clara in Egmont. To carry this principle of female honor too far is to forget the end in thinking of the means—and this is just what people often do; for such exaggeration suggests that the value of sexual honor is absolute; while the truth is that it is more relative than any other kind. One might go so far as to say that its value is purely conventional, when one sees from Thomasius how in all ages and countries, up to the time of the Reformation, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... own peculiar form of worship, except for a little while at a time, and the greater part of the people were at this time more or less closely identified with the village corporation. So that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that all Gershom was moved to welcome the Reverend William Maxwell ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... discovering characteristic details, that even when she speaks of places and peoples with whom we are all familiar, she compels us to listen, and irresistibly holds our attention. It has been said that in some respects her manner is that of the elder Dumas, but while she is more honest and less given to exaggeration she does not rise to the same literary standard. The famous author of "Anthony" is still first master in the art, more difficult than the world in general believes it to be, of recording the experiences of travel; he is a master in it, because he does not make the attempt, which ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... the figures employed by the author of the Rajavali partake of the exaggeration common to all oriental narratives, no one who has visited the regions now silent and deserted, once the homes of millions, can hesitate to believe that when the island was in the zenith of its prosperity, the population of Ceylon ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... two instances, a tendency to the use of oaths which in this country have long been unknown in good society. The reputed wealth of some Glasgow men is enormous, though we think it not unlikely that there is a great deal of exaggeration as to that subject. We did, however, hear it said that one firm of iron merchants realized for some time profits to the extent of nearly four hundred thousand a year. We were told of an individual who died worth a million, all the produce of his own industry and skill; and one hears ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... mad exaggeration to say we camped. Wet to the skin—dirty to the verge of feeling suicidal—bitten by insects until the blood ran down from us—lost (for we bad no notion where the end of the ford might be)—at the mercy of any prowling beasts that might discover us (for our rifle locks were ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... have fallen refreshingly into the depths of my heart. But, dear sister-in-law, I must tell you, as well as the others, that you are too liberal towards me in dispensing your esteem and praises, and your exaggeration has cast me back face to face with my inmost judge, who has shown me in the mirror of my conscience the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... original drawings of Le Moyne and White with the engravings of De Bry, as one may now do in the British Museum, must be convinced that, beautiful as De Bry's work is, it seems tame in the presence of the original water-colour drawings. There is no exaggeration in ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... in a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective "large" might be an exaggeration. ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... those street-robbers to whose gang the malefactors we are now speaking of belong be at present too recent a fact to be questioned, yet possibly in future times 'twill be thought an exaggeration of truth to say that even at noon-day, and in the most open places in London, persons were stopped and robbed. The offenders for many months escaped with impunity, until those crimes became so frequent and the terrors of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... in the South of England I shall take from Mr. Daniel Jones' dictionary,[16] the authority of which cannot, I think, be disputed. It is true that it represents a pronunciation so bad that its slovenliness is likely to be thought overdone, but there is no more exaggeration than any economical system of phonetic spelling is bound to show. It is indeed a strong and proper objection to all such simplifications that they are unable to exhibit the finer distinctions; but this must not imply that Mr. Jones' ear is lacking in delicate perception, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... connected with the new moon, was originally a lunar festival Exaggeration of the Sabbath rest ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... you that?" laughed Mrs. Wriothesley. "He has a good memory. It's now some six or seven years ago that your cousin, Lady Rosington, then unmarried, was staying with me for the season, Mary Bloxam at that time was trailing that grenadier eldest girl of hers about" (a little bit of feminine exaggeration this, the lady referred to being only half an inch taller than Blanche), "and thought Sir Charles would suit very well for her husband. Unluckily for Mary Bloxam, I thought Sir Charles equally suitable for Jessie, and—well, in short, ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exaggeration on the old lady's, concerning her former position in society; but what struck me was the forcible instance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the submission and reverence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... destined for an evil end. Perhaps the assertion that Alexander furnished to his master 250,000l. and the services of several thousand men, for the purpose of obtaining and examining the specimens required in the composition of his work on the "History of Animals" may be an exaggeration, but there can be no doubt that in these transactions was the real beginning of that policy which soon led to the institution of the Museum at Alexandria. The importance of this event, though hitherto little understood, admits of no exaggeration, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... for all his affected exaggeration, there was the ring of an unmistakable and even pitiable vanity in his voice, and a self-consciousness that suffused his broad cheeks and writhed his full mouth, but seemed to deepen the frown ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... acuteness. Every touch against it communicated itself to his frame, as though the wood of his inclosure had become part of himself; and every sound intensified itself to an extraordinary degree of distinctness, as though the temporary loss of vision had been compensated for by an exaggeration of the sense of hearing. This was particularly the case as the priest drove in the screws. He heard the shuffle on the stairs, the whisper to Ethel, her retreat, and the ascending footsteps; while at the same time he was aware of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... exchanged views on how the campaign should be run, on the appalling iniquity of those A.S.C. people at the base, who lived on the fat of the land while the fighting men starved—a slight but very popular exaggeration with the troops—on the possibility of a mail within the next year or two, ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... development, destined to bring matters to a crisis indeed, and to weigh at least three souls in the balance. Upon further examination of Miss Barrett's condition, the physicians had declared that it was absolutely necessary that she should be taken to Italy. This may, without any exaggeration, be called the turning-point and the last great earthly opportunity of Barrett's character. He had not originally been an evil man, only a man who, being stoical in practical things, permitted himself, to his great detriment, a self-indulgence in moral things. He had grown to regard ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... shoulders forward on to your breast not only disfigures you, but is alarming on account of the injury to your health. The continuance in this vile habit will certainly produce a consumption: then farewell papa; farewell pleasure; farewell life! This is no exaggeration; no fiction to excite your apprehensions. But, setting aside this distressing consideration, I am astonished that you have no more pride in your appearance. You will certainly stint your ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... seemed bright enough. There was little furniture besides the plain bed, a little table, a couple of chairs, and a tall, dark wardrobe. A grim crucifix hung above the abbess's head, on the white wall, the work of an age in which horror was familiar to the eye, and needed exaggeration ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... natives, it would be, even if the Hollanders had not gone thither, a loss of the magnitude which will be made evident by this paper; but if your Majesty lose them, and your greatest enemy gain them, the loss will be beyond all exaggeration. Therefore, I have desired to advance four important considerations regarding those islands: namely, the extension of the faith, and the increase of your Majesty's dominion, glory, and riches. And in case of any doubt as to the truth of my assertions, I will prove them by trustworthy witnesses ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... caused by the fact that types adopted a scant three months before had become obsolete, because of experience on the European battlefields, and later inventions before the first machines could be completed. There may be exaggeration in the statement but it is largely true. Neither the machines nor the tactics employed at the beginning of the war were in use in its fourth year. The course of this evolution, with its reasons, are described ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... white cockade, and waited upon Rose with a pretext of great devotion for the service in which her father was engaged, and many apologies for the freedom he must necessarily use for the support of his people. It was at this moment that Rose learned, by open-mouthed fame, with all sorts of exaggeration, that Waverley had killed the smith at Cairnvreckan, in an attempt to arrest him; had been cast into a dungeon by Major Melville of Cairnvreckan, and was to be executed by martial law within three days. In the agony which these tidings excited ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... first of these points I may observe, without the slightest exaggeration, that very few of our countrymen indeed have had such opportunities as myself of forming a correct opinion; for very few Englishmen have been so entirely dependent on a native population for society. For the first four or five years of my residence in Manjarabad[31] there were ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... childish old man woman Trenholme encountered when he entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food Bates set before him; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new country hospitality is considered indispensable to an easy conscience that he had received ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... on the sands. They fed greedily on the flesh of these animals. The pearls found were not larger than a lentil or a little pea, but they had a beautiful orient, for they had been taken out while the animal was still alive. Not to be accused of exaggeration concerning the size of these shells, the Spaniards sent the King some remarkable specimens, from which the meat had been removed, at the same time as the pearls. It does not seem possible that shells of such size should be found anywhere. These shells and the gold which has been found pretty much ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Bullen was always a pleasure, but still greater was my delight in the discovery of one of whom I may now say without exaggeration that he has become one of the leading men of letters of our time. The author I mean is Mr. Walter De La Mare. My friend, Mr. Ingpen, who was then on the staff of Smith & Elder, and was detailed to help me in getting up ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England. That feeling found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that in neither case the issue of the plot or the plot—if such it may be called —nor the main incident, was exaggerated. Whether the treatment was free from exaggeration, it is not my province to say. I only know what I attempted to do. The sense produced by the contact of the outer life with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the smallest notice," and dismisses it in a few lines. It would be interesting to know for what other "Scripture," canonical or uncanonical, there is evidence of authenticity so strong as for this; exactness of detail in names; absence of any exaggeration more than is implied in recounting any miracle; the transaction recorded in the public archives; seen there by Eusebius himself; copied down and translated by him; such evidence for any one of the Gospels would make belief far easier than it is at present. The assertion ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... fine passages and telling lines, besides the recommendation claimed for it by Baroness Bunsen: "The Installation Ode I thought quite affecting, because the selection of striking points was founded on fact, and all exaggeration and humbug ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... generality of his countrymen were of opinion that the inspired writers had themselves written in English. It was forgotten that they were Orientals, who wrote in the language natural to them, with the customary grandiloquence of orientalism, with the poetic exaggeration which, in the East, was the breath of life. It was forgotten also that they wrote in ignorance of those natural truths which men had now acquired by experience and induction, and not by revelation. Their truth was the truth of heaven, not the truth of earth. No man thought that the sun in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... appear that Macaulay's estimate of Johnson's own edition has been generally accepted, even by those who in other matters remark on the historian's habit of exaggeration. "The Preface," we read, "though it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had, during many years, observed human life and human nature. The best specimen is the note on the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... poet stepped forward with an instrument that resembled a harp and a drum combined. After he had struck the strings, and beaten the drum, he began to recite. It was a song celebrating all Attila's feats in terms of strong exaggeration, and it would have been endless, if the assembly had not taken up the refrain and struck with their short swords on the table. The poet represented Attila's defeat on the Catalaunian Plain as an honourable ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... this period was the undisputed monarch of the press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said to possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period during which he wrote for it included the year 1848,—when foreign politics were ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... as though waves of darkness without a ray of light had closed over her head, and she had gone down cold and dumb to the depths. The first disillusionment is painful for every one; but for a sincere heart, averse to self-deception and innocent of frivolity or exaggeration, it is almost unendurable. Natalya remembered her childhood, how, when walking in the evening, she always tried to go in the direction of the setting sun, where there was light in the sky, and not ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... Quincey was an artist, the artistic temperament was a curse. So also with Thomas Carlyle. So also with Charles Lamb. The artistic temperament is creative, sympathetic, responsive; it sees everything, feels everything, realises everything, on a scale of exaggeration. It is in quest of ideals, and all ideals are more or less in the clouds, and not seldom at the tip-top of the rainbow. Those who undertake such long journeys are subject to disappointment and fatigue by the way; if ever they do come to the end of their journey it is probably in a temper ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... calculation the amount would be an average of two dollars per ton on the river route, via New Orleans, and ten dollars per ton over the railroad routes. The completion of a comparatively short canal of eighty miles, to cover the gap from Buchanan to the upper Kanawha, would without the shadow of exaggeration save the West forty millions of dollars a year; and the central water-line would yield an interest of ten to fifteen per cent. on the capital invested, while opening a continuous water-road from Liverpool to Omaha, running ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... very long train, a little fur toque to match a small neck piece, and a little sausage-shaped muff. Her diamond earrings were enormous, but not very good stones. Nina's dress was of raspberry cloth, cut in the latest exaggeration of fashion—her skirt was short and skimp as her hat was huge. Her muff of sables as big and soft as a pillow—she could easily have buried her arms in it to the shoulder. The elaborateness of Nina's clothes ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... OF THE INTEREST IN SCIENCE. A very prominent feature of world educational development, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the general introduction into the schools of the study of science. It is no exaggeration of the importance of this to say that no addition of new subject-matter and no change in the direction and purpose of education, since that time, has been of greater importance for the welfare of mankind, or more significant of new ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... fort friends appeared; there was a mistletoe bough that night and not a little coquetry and merriment, for Wells had invited the library girls and numerous young men to be present, and the customs of Old England were reproduced with characteristic American exaggeration. That mistletoe bough remained suspended from its chandelier, a reminder of the joys of the old year, even after '95 came knocking at the door, and in some odd way a little sprig thereof was found one evening to be clinging to the top of a cabinet photograph ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... same, or nearly the same degree and manner. In such a genus as Labrus, which includes some of the most splendid fishes in the world—for instance, the Peacock Labrus (L. pavo), described (28. Bory Saint Vincent, in 'Dict. Class. d'Hist. Nat.' tom. ix. 1826, p. 151.), with pardonable exaggeration, as formed of polished scales of gold, encrusting lapis-lazuli, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts—we may, with much probability, accept this belief; for we have seen that the sexes in at least one species of the genus differ greatly in colour. With some fishes, as with many of the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... always invited, and at which the number, quality, and cost of the dishes were carefully regulated by the Republic's laws. On this occasion, one or more persons were chosen as governors of the feast, and after the tables were removed, a mock-heroic character appeared, and recounted with absurd exaggeration the deeds of the ancestors of the bride and groom. The next morning ristorativi of sweetmeats and confectionery were presented to the happy couple, by whom the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... merely through the constraints of my position; friends I might have made have remained strangers to me; solitude of the bitter kind, the solitude which is enforced at times when mind or heart longs for companionship, often cursed my life solely because I was poor. I think it would scarce be an exaggeration to say that there is no moral good which has not to be paid for in coin of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... some new truth like that. He didn't say so in so many words; on the contrary, he was tremendously insinuating and satirical, and pretended to think she had proved all and a great deal more than she wanted to prove; but his exaggeration, and the way he rung all the changes on two or three of the points she had made at Mrs. Burrage's, were just the sign that he was a scoffer of scoffers. He wouldn't do anything but laugh; he seemed to think that he might laugh at her all day without her taking offence. Well, he might if it amused ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... fault was imitation of everything that struck me, not by its beauty but by its strangeness, and not wishing to confess myself an imitator I resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original. According to my idea nothing was good or even tolerable; nothing was worth the trouble of turning the head, and yet when I had become warmed up in a discussion it seemed as if there was no ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason of their very detachment and preoccupation, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... pressing upon him with a greater insistence than ever, for the runners from the half-breeds and the Northern Indians were daily arriving at the reserves bearing reports of rebel victories of startling magnitude. But even without any exaggeration tales grave enough were being carried from lip to lip throughout the Indian tribes. Small wonder that the irresponsible young Chiefs, chafing under the rule of the white man and thirsting for the mad rapture of fight, were straining ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He defended respectability with violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... condition of Mile End—those gaunt-eyed women and wasted children, all the sordid details of their unjust avoidable suffering weighed upon his nerves perpetually. But he was conscious that this state of feeling was one of tension, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it was impossible he should let the matter alone, he was anxious ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... said, sweeping the floor with his cap in an exaggeration of respect, 'now, perhaps, your high-mightiness will condescend to unmask? The table is no longer between us, nor are your fair friends here to protect ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... true English reserve, and a coldness that seemed rather to grate 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 to love ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... yourself, "Perhaps this may amuse me." You will read the story of Father Goriot's secret woes, and, dining thereafter with an unspoiled appetite, will lay the blame of your insensibility upon the writer, and accuse him of exaggeration, of writing romances. Ah! once for all, this drama is neither a fiction nor a romance! All is true,—so true, that every one can discern the elements of the tragedy in his own house, perhaps in ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... alone was exempt from this plague, but the other corps surpassed one another. Hence scenes of the most shameful kind and most destructive of subordination and discipline, the details of which confined within the limits of the most scrupulous truthfulness would appear a monstrous exaggeration." Lally in despair wrote to his friends in France, "Hell vomited me into this land of iniquities, and I am waiting, like Jonah, for the whale that shall receive me in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... signifies the gilded, was not originally the name of the country. The territory subsequently distinguished by that appellation was at first known as the country of el Rey Dorado, the Gilded King.) Such were the motives which prompted exaggeration on the part of those writers who have given most reputation to the Amazons of America; but these motives do not, I think, suffice for entirely rejecting a tradition, which is spread among various nations having ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... biographers. They were indeed at the time of their inception a new thing in Venetian art. Nothing so daring as these foreshortenings, as these scenes of dramatic violence, of physical force triumphant, had been seen in Venice. The turbulent spirit was an exaggeration of that revealed by Titian in the St. Peter Martyr; the problem of the foreshortening for the purposes of ceiling decoration was superadded. It must be remembered, too, that even in Rome, the headquarters of ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... it is inevitable that there should be some fantastic theories of cure. But extremes are quite pardonable, where it is so important to explore all the sources of danger. Special ills should have special assailants, at whatever risk of exaggeration. As water-cures and vegetarian boarding-houses are the necessary defence of humanity against dirt and over-eating, so is the most ungainly Bloomer that ever drifted on bare poles across the continent a providential protest against the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... and the acquaintances and friends who declared that no one would suppose her to be much older than her famous son, whose age was known to the whole world, were not guilty of undue exaggeration. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... better than those of the prints issued at the time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent imaginary,—altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single military engagement had taken place;—the artist had "flushed to anticipate the scene." In these prints the Russians were ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... accounts in which the variation of a small circumstance may have transformed some extraordinary appearance, or some critical coincidence of events, into a miracle; stories, in a word, which may be resolved into exaggeration. The miracles of the Gospel can by no possibility be explained away in this manner. Total fiction will account for anything; but no stretch of exaggeration that has any parallel in other histories, no force of fancy upon real circumstances, could produce the ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... the more readily and firmly, from the apparent caution and hesitation with which they were at first published—the vehement contradiction in our papers of many pretended French accounts—and the abuse lavished upon them for falsehood, exaggeration, and gasconade. But is it not possible—is it not, indeed, perfectly natural—that the publishers even of known falsehood should assume this cautious demeanour, and this abhorrence of exaggeration, ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... and his honour obliged him to unsheathe his sword." I recollect one particularly painful scene, where the King, weeping bitterly, flung himself across his writing-table and with trembling hands tried to wrench from his neck his order Pour le Merite. I can affirm without any exaggeration that I could see him wasting away under the ceaseless moral blows dealt to him, and that the mental torment he went through undoubtedly ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... preserved a dignified silence; this last insult is more than flesh and blood can stand." Another "blood" had got in, but it was a new sentence and he thought it might be allowed to remain. "We shall not be accused of exaggeration if we say that Essenland would lose, and rightly lose, her prestige in the eyes of Europe if she let this affront pass unnoticed. In a day she would sink from a first-rate to a fifth-rate power." But he ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... rein to almost all his whims. Indeed, reports of a rather fantastic kind, somewhat recalling Duke Charles of Brunswick, were current about him, the most extravagant being of a ballet he had had performed for him by fifty naked dancing girls. There was a certain amount of exaggeration about this, perhaps. In any case he troubled himself no longer about his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... relieved and elated by his apparent command of the situation. He knew what a godsend the ship's cargo, which he and Talbot had ascertained to be even more valuable than had been represented, would be to the American army. It might be said without exaggeration, that the success of the great cause depended upon the fortune of that one little ship under his command. Talbot had properly classified and inventoried the cargo according to orders, and was prepared to make immediate distribution of it upon their arrival ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... "we want the plain, simple account of where you have been, without any exaggeration, for I am afraid one of you—I don't know which, but I dare say I shall make a very shrewd guess before we have done—has been dressing up your adventures with rather a ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... our stump work pictures, the Italian raised work, are gracious, graceful figures perfectly proportioned, and set in lovely elegant arabesques, with no exaggeration of style or period. Some specimens of this work must have been brought from Italy, through France, and the English workers quickly adopted and adapted them to their own heavier intelligence. Some of the little figures are certainly very grotesque. Frequently the tiny little ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... followed that excursion into politics. Those scathing articles you wrote for La Liberte! It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they altered the whole aspect of French political thought. Those wonderful speeches you made during your election campaign at Angers. How the people worshipped you! You might have carried your ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... then believe that there is no great exaggeration in his nephew's statement, substantially confirmed as it is by other evidence, that when Milton left Cambridge in 1632 he was already "loved and admired by the whole university, particularly by the Fellows and most ingenious ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... trying to conform exactly to the movements of a machine, you teach him to abrogate the very principle of life. Variety is of the essence of life, and machinery is the enemy of variety. This is no argument against the educative uses of machinery, but only against the exaggeration of these uses. If a workman expend a reasonable portion of his energy in following the movements of a machine, he may gain a considerable educational value; but he must also have both time and energy left to cultivate the spontaneous and progressive arts ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... 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 fail to recall the picture of the country-bred ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... that about 40 in every 100 of the deaths annually occurring in Great Britain and the United States are of children under five years of age. To avoid every possibility of exaggeration, we will place the number in this country at 30 in 100. At this rate we lose about 200,000 children under five years of age every year. Now, if nine tenths of the mortality among infants in the Dublin Hospital were caused by breathing bad air, we may reasonably ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... 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 deviation from ...
— 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

... much exaggeration, relying on striking statements for increased effect. Shakespeare possibly intended to present an exaggerated type of the Jew in the character of Shylock. Shall the student recognize exaggeration as such? Or shall he take ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... I call it, this substance that Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood made between them; and having regard now to what it has already done and all that it is certainly going to do, there is surely no exaggeration in the name. So I shall continue to call it therefore throughout my story. But Mr. Bensington would no more have called it that in cold blood than he would have gone out from his flat in Sloane Street clad in regal scarlet and a wreath ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... certain inscriptions. The satirists are fond of dwelling on the license allowed to women in the case of divorce. Martial, for instance,[100] says that one Theselina married ten husbands in one month. Still, allowing for the natural exaggeration of satirists, we are yet reasonably sure that divorce had reached great heights in the upper classes. Whether it was as bad among the middle classes is very improbable. There was one kind of marriage which, originally at least, did not admit of dissolution.[101] This was the solemn ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... His whole effect was to be derived from means, with which that little meagre frame and sharp treble had nothing to do. But he had a singularly vivid eye. It was of the deepest black, and such was the intensity of its expression in his more impassioned moments, that it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that it shot fire. Still, a stranger would have regarded him chiefly as a humorist, from the glances of sly sarcasm, and even of open ridicule which he cast round the court during the pleadings of some of his "learned brethren." But, in that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... the quietest way possible, never speaking of his own part in the brave deeds of the time, except when pressed to do so, and then with a reticence all too provoking, from the well-grounded suspicion that he kept back the pith of the real story of personal participation he might tell without tinge of exaggeration or boastfulness. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... terrace, golden for her as it had been two years ago; she came slowly, more slowly than ever, with a touch of exaggeration in her rhythm, in her delay, in the poise of her head, and in all her gestures; the shade too much that Straker had malignly prophesied for her. But with it all she was more beautiful, and, he could ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... months, the longest he had yet made since he had been at the head of the French Government, whether as Consul or Emperor. The interview at Tilsit, the Emperor Alexander's friendship, which was spoken of everywhere in terms of exaggeration, and the peace established on the Continent, conferred on Napoleon a moral influence in public opinion which he had not possessed since his coronation. Constant in his hatred of deliberative assemblies, which he had often termed collections of babblers, ideologists, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... time you may call 'Everlasting Life,' but it clearly differs from what men ordinarily and almost inevitably understand by 'Everlasting Life,' which to them is an endless prolongation of time. Therefore, when they imagine heaven as consisting of an endless prolongation and exaggeration or rarefication of such pleasures as we know, they invite the retort, "And pray what would become of any one of our known pleasures, or even of our conceivable pleasures, if it were made everlasting?" As Jowett asked, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the terrible cruelties narrated of the period of the Sepoy mutiny. And he only needed to remember his own experiences in Lahore to be convinced that all those horrible stories were no exaggeration, but, rather, well within the actual truth of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... inaction—he was anything but a resigned man. Captain George, getting his furlough and carrying him off, was blessed from the deepest heart of the ward nurses. He had a kind of feeling that this his first illness was a matter in which the universe should be concerned, and with that fretful self-exaggeration came that other unutterable yearning that attends the first proof that we are coheirs with others to the ills flesh is heir to, weary homesickness ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... from me, and I still read her thoughts only through the language of her lips and demeanour: I had still the human interest of wondering whether what I did and said pleased her, of longing to hear a word of affection, of giving a delicious exaggeration of meaning to her smile. But I was conscious of a growing difference in her manner towards me; sometimes strong enough to be called haughty coldness, cutting and chilling me as the hail had done that came across the sunshine on our marriage morning; sometimes only perceptible in ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... Columbus to tell his story. Now had arrived the most critical moment since his return; but our Admiral, it is to be regretted, did not realize it, else he would have been more guarded in what he said. He should have told a straightforward tale of what he had done, without one word of exaggeration; but Christopher had a fervid Italian imagination and could never resist exaggerating. So, instead of dwelling on the one stupendous, thrilling fact that he had sailed three thousand miles into the fearsome ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... in the world," she cried; "my dear old nurse!" She started up from the sofa, and pointed with theatrical exaggeration of gesture to the clock on the mantelpiece. "Look! it's only ten minutes to six. In ten minutes, I shall have my arms round Teresa's neck. Don't look at me in that way! It's your fault if I'm excited. It's your dreadful eyes that do it. Come here, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... Marie Antoinette was fully exposed in her later years; and not only did she rise above them, but the more terrible and unexampled they were, the more conspicuous was the superiority of her mind to fortune. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of the whole world has preserved no record of greater heroism, in either sex, than was shown by Marie Antoinette during the closing years of her life. No courage was ever put to the proof by such ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... moment relative to the war carried on by the Florentines against Pisa; and exhibits a numerous group of warriors, roused from their bathing in the Arno, by the sudden signal of a trumpet, and rushing to arms. This composition may, without exaggeration, be said to personify with unexampled variety, that motion which Agasias and Theon embodied in single figures. In imagining this transient moment from state of relaxation to a state of energy, the ideas ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... examined it diligently, and affirms it to be the largest in the world; and so undoubtedly it is if the measurement of the traveler is to be taken literally, for he declares that it is one hundred miles in circuit. This seeming exaggeration has been explained by supposing him to mean Chinese miles or li, which are to the Italian miles in the proportion of three to eight; and Mr. Marsden observes that the walls even of the modern city, the limits of which have been considerably ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... reputation and this victory, at thirty-eight years of age, he had voluntarily shut the door against the intoxications and pride of success; he had mutilated his life, buried his genius in penitence, obeying simply the calls of his conscience, and, with singular moderation in the very midst of exaggeration, becoming a father of a family and remaining a courtier, at the same time that he gave up the stage and glory. Racine was gentle and sensible even in his repentance and his sacrifices. Boileau gave religion the credit for this very moderation. "Reason commonly brings others ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... about the wise men of Gotham, the old woman whose petticoats were cut short by the pedlar whose name was Stout, and a number of other inhabitants of Fool-land, to whom the heart of childhood is still closely attached, and also of the exaggeration-stories, the German Luegenmaehrchen, on which was founded the narrative of Baron Munchausen's surprising adventures. But instead of doing this, before passing on to the more important groups of the Skazkas, I will quote, as this chapter's ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... Kheyr-ed-Din anticipated, ended in the complete rout of the Moslems. Everywhere the Corsair King was in the forefront of the battle, and it is said that he disposed of fifty thousand men on this occasion; but this is probably an exaggeration, and in any case the bulk of his forces consisted of those African levies which, in a pitched battle against European troops, were practically useless owing to their want of discipline and cohesion. Very soon the hosts of the Emperor had ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... just as in the old days he was wont to walk away from a farmyard with a calf or a pig under each arm. It has been said of him that he could carry off a steer in that fashion, but probably that is an exaggeration or ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... allow for my exaggeration,' said Alma softly. 'One or two have said it—just people who know most about music. And there's a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... to tell the whole truth in one discourse. He is not a witness in the box; he is a prophet aiming at some special moral reform. If a Bishop is lecturing his Brethren for their failings he is sure to indulge, not exactly in exaggeration, but in one-sided statements of the facts. He will talk at length about the sins, and say nothing about the virtues. It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that when the Brethren became more prosperous they were not so strict in some of their rules as ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton's retirement from Washington's Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr — who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics — began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... more important defects. It professes to explain portions of our history hitherto not perfectly understood, and it contains many statements for the truth of which we must rely upon the good sense and accuracy of the writer; yet it is full of errors, and often evinces a disposition to exaggeration little calculated to produce confidence in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... served a purpose in the education of the race. While the exaggeration of familiar attributes easily awakens mirth in a simple mind, it does more: it teaches practical lessons of wisdom and discretion. And possibly the lesson was the original cause of ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... easy to fill a volume with anecdotes and adventures in which the black bear figures as the hero. Many stories of his peculiar habits are related in the back settlements of America, some of which are true, while others partake largely of exaggeration. We have not room for these, however; and I have given you only facts, such as will enable you to form some idea of the general habits of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the Sexual Characters. The Sexual Organs. Mutilations, Adornments, and Garments. Sexual Allurement the Original Object of Such Devices. The Religious Element. Unaesthetic Character of the Sexual Organs. Importance of the Secondary Sexual Characters. The Pelvis and Hips. Steatopygia. Obesity. Gait. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis









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