"Exaggerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their holy influence. This state of things ought not to have been brought upon us. The reverent reading of the Bible alone would never have led us into such straits. It is the old story of all human reverence. That which we revere, we exaggerate. Glamor gathers around it. The symbol is identified with the spiritual reality. The image becomes an idol. The wonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end in an irrational reverence of that which is worthy ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... enthusiasm to the support of a clearly defined purpose. They had counted the cost and made their choice; and every instinct of proud and self-contained men disposed them to minimize the difficulties which they encountered in the New World and to exaggerate those which they had overcome in the Old. Having staked their judgment on the wisdom of the venture, they were bound to be justified in the event. To admit that life on the physical and moral frontier was less than they had imagined would be a humiliating confession ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... see from the welcomes given to him by great official personages, that these remarks do not in the least exaggerate the feeling created all over the country by the activities of The Army. Had The General merely made great proposals he would only have been looked upon in the generally favourable way in which men naturally regard every prospector of benevolent ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... relative proportions. Worst of all, if I may be permitted to say so, they were intended to boost something in particular. Boosting is a very unhandsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merits in order to create disproportion in the general development is not a particularly handsome thing or a particularly intelligent thing. A city cannot grow on the face of a great state like a mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... survey of Arthur's fashionable attire, "I should say he might do fairly well in a gent's furnishing store in one of those damn cities." The old man was not unfeeling—far from it; he had simply been educated by long years of experience out of any disposition to exaggerate the unimportant in the facts of life. "He'll be better off and more useful as a clerk than he would be as a pattern of damnfoolishness and snobbishness. So, Hiram was right anyway I look at it, and no matter how it comes out. But—it did take ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... himself only one opinion. He fiercely denied that she was absent-minded and listless when alone with him; he refused to believe his own eyes when he saw a light in her face when she looked at Hinton that was never there for him. He preferred to exaggerate to himself her sweetness, her gentleness, her loyalty, demanding nothing, and continuing ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... her to rest. I cannot tell how Mr. Tatham, a man so much occupied, managed to subtract from all he had to do almost a whole day to see his cousin through the trial, and stand by her, sparing her all the lesser annoyances which surround and exaggerate such a great fact. He had brought her out into the fresh air, feeling that movement was the best thing for her, and instead of taking her home in the carriage which was waiting, had made her walk with him, supported on his arm, on which she hung in a sort of ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... proceed to Europe, for the consultation of certain documents connected with the subject, preparatory to the publication of his "History of the American Colonies," a work in which, doubtless, he will not be liable to the reproach of histories written by New-Englanders, that they exaggerate the virtues and the influence of the Puritans. Mr. Tyson is of the best stock of the Philadelphia Quakers, and the traditional fame of his party will not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... pupils enter the classroom. I purposely exaggerate the likelihood of danger. They are all to stay on their benches and not stir. This is agreed. I have plenty of elbow room. There is no one by me, except my acolyte, standing by my side, ready to help me when the time comes. The others look on ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... ill-treatment by the authorities of the gaol. The governor had been tried and punished in consequence. Fitzjames gives the actual facts to show how Reade had allowed himself, as a writer of fiction, to exaggerate and distort them, and had at the same time taken the airs of an historian of facts and bragged of his resolution to brand all judges who should dare to follow the precedent which he denounced. This article, I may notice, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a companion, an exceedingly accurate member of the staff. "How you fellows DO exaggerate!" Subsequent knowledge of the Gold Coast has convinced me fully that the extra funeral being placed half-an-hour sooner than it occurred is the usual percentage of exaggeration you will be able to find in stories relating ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to inspirit the South and to dispirit the North. If English comments have palliated or justified the original and the incidental measures of the Rebellion,—if they have been zealous to find or to exaggerate excuses for it, to overstate the apparent or professed grounds of it, to wink at the meannesses and outrages by which it has thriven,—if they have perverted or misrepresented the real issue, have ridiculed or discouraged the purposes of its patriotic opponents, have embarrassed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... vegetables as agents to combat disease. Here, of course, was a rudimentary therapeutics, a crude principle of an empirical art of medicine. As just suggested, the lower order of animals have an instinctive knowledge that enables them to seek out remedial herbs (though we probably exaggerate the extent of this instinctive knowledge); and if this be true, man must have inherited from his prehuman ancestors this instinct along with the others. That he extended this knowledge through observation and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... not impossible that the lower ranks of writers, who exaggerate the prevailing fashion of exactly reproducing what any one can see and hear, may find themselves outbid and overpowered on this ground by illustration in line and colour. In this direction, indeed, lies the danger of extreme Realism. It wages war against Romance, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... George Sand over to republicanism. Without wishing to exaggerate the service he had rendered her by this, it appears to me that it certainly was one, if we look at it in one way. Rightly or wrongly, George Sand had seen in Michel the man who devotes himself entirely to a cause of general interest. She had learnt something in his school, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into, besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression—which was the most difficult of all—to repress the ready frown, and keep the features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed, whilst intense passion would speak ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to what some Moros, natives of Burney, told me, it belongs to one lord. It is said that there are a great many pearls of enormous size, even as large as pigeon's eggs; but my opinion is that all the natives of that land are great liars, and exaggerate things. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... the chamber, her head is in a line with the roof beam which rests on the capital of the sacred pillar. The remains of an actual shrine discovered in 1907 close to the Central Court at Knossos show that the fresco does not exaggerate the smallness of the sacred buildings. The Gournia shrine, situated in the centre of the town, is about twelve feet square, and its discoverer believes that the walls of the sacred enclosure may never have stood more ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... disease from which she suffered. Kerner's account of her childhood shows plainly that she was born temperamentally imaginative and unstable and that she was raised in an environment well calculated to exaggerate her imaginativeness and instability. Ghosts and goblins were favorite topics of conversation among the peasantry of Prevorst, while the children with whom she played were many of them unstable like herself, neurotic, hysterical, and the victims of St. Vitus's dance. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... being spoken to civilly by him. I don't mean that only snobs feel that; but respectable people, who don't pursue fashion, would be more pleased if an Earl they knew turned up and asked for a cup of tea than if the worthiest of their neighbours did so. I don't exaggerate the power of rank—it doesn't make a man necessarily powerful now, but a very little ability, backed up by rank, will go a long way. A great general or a great statesman likes to be made an Earl; ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you exaggerate surely. Surely a certain measure of family pride is justifiable; it ought to nerve a man to be worthy of those who have gone before him. Nor have I ever thought that your feeling about your name being a heritage that you had to guard jealously and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Pickwick; and his reception, from an audience than which perhaps none more remarkable could have been brought together, went beyond all expectations formed. "It is really impossible," he wrote to me next morning, "to exaggerate the magnificence of the reception or the effect of the reading. The whole city will talk of nothing else and hear of nothing else to-day. Every ticket for those announced here, and in New York, is sold. All are sold at the highest price, for which in our calculation ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the basket Principles is another name for prejudices She bears our children—ours as a general thing Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress The Essex band done the best it could Time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase To exaggerate is the only way I can approximate to the truth Two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other public What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? When in doubt, tell the truth Women always want to ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... gain. Here we have the true theory, and it is one which leads directly to freedom in trade. I now, gentlemen, abandon you this theory, as I have done all those of the preceding chapters. Do with it as you please, exaggerate it as you will; it has nothing to fear. Push it to the furthest extreme; imagine, if it so please you, that foreign nations should inundate us with useful produce of every description, and ask nothing in return; that our importations ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... there is the same tendency to exaggerate the significance of "survivals," and to neglect, on the other hand, the phenomena of disengagement. Because the primitive fables and illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is asserted, or suggested, that religion ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... aliens become congested in masses of industrial workers, they present a local problem of extreme difficulty may be granted, but I think that those who are in contact with these local problems are inclined to exaggerate the general or national danger. The dominating American type will persist, as it persists to-day; the people will remain, in all that is essential, an Anglo-Saxon and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... across this crown, disappearing in the thicker fringe above the ears, ran the most prodigious scar I had ever seen. Because the vision of it was so fleeting, ere the match blew out, and because of the scar's very prodigiousness, I may possibly exaggerate, but I could have sworn that I could lay two fingers deep into the horrid cleft and that it was fully two fingers broad. There seemed no bone at all, just a great fissure, a deep valley covered with skin; and I was confident that the brain ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... I do not exaggerate when I say that the majority of educated Irishmen would feel grateful to the man who informed them that the history of their country was valueless and unworthy of study, that the pre-Christian history was a myth, the post-Christian mere annals, the ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... testimony of competent and trustworthy witnesses. I was three different times at the front, spent a week in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps, and saw for myself how our soldiers ate, drank, slept, worked, and suffered. I shall try not to exaggerate anything, but, on the other hand, I shall not suppress or conceal anything, or smooth anything over. Poultney Bigelow was accused of being unpatriotic, disloyal, and even seditious because he told what I am now convinced was the truth about the state of affairs at Tampa; but it seems ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Do his countrymen exaggerate his virtues? Listen to Guizot, the historian of civilization: "Washington did the two greatest things which in politics it is permitted to man to attempt. He maintained by peace the independence of his country, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... up everywhere. 5. The precious morning hours should not be wasted. 6. The timely suggestion was very kindly received. 7. We turned rather abruptly. 8. A highly enjoyable entertainment was provided. 9. The entertainment was highly enjoyed. 10. Why will people exaggerate so! 11. A somewhat dangerous pass had been reached quite unexpectedly. 12. We now travel still more rapidly. 13. Therefore he spoke excitedly. 14. You will undoubtedly be very cordially welcomed. 15. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... We do not exaggerate the scene in Mr. Birtwell's supper-room, but rather subdue the picture. As Whitford drew nigh the supper-room the sounds of boisterous mirth struck on his ears and stirred him like the rattle of a drum. The heaviness went out of ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... Torquay, I may say, for nothing. Those days are over. Your country bookseller is, in fact, more likely, such tales does he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues does he receive by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than to part with them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, 'just to clear my shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room.' The only compensation for this is the catalogues themselves. You ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... concerned, I feel quite confident that, where we have killed one Indian, we have lost ten whites, take it through from the Atlantic to the Pacific; but you can't figure out any such results from the reports which have made up history. The temptation to exaggerate for the purpose of hero-making and future political preferment is too great to be resisted, and the consequence is that truth suffers amazingly. Perhaps it is better for mankind that the slaughter should be on paper, rather than ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Jesus. Paul gives us two accounts of his conversion and how it took place (Acts 22:6-15; 26:12-18). The men who were with Paul saw a light and heard a voice, but not what was said. It is impossible to describe or exaggerate what took place in Paul's mind in those brief moments while Jesus talked to him; but his beliefs, and his whole life plan were radically changed. It had been well if no explanation of this conversion had been attempted and the great fact had been left to stand as it does in the Acts. ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... or two other points I mean to touch upon, and let me just name them. Do not let us so exaggerate that thought of the substantial sameness of the future and the past as to flatten life and make it dreary and profitless and insignificant. Let us rather feel, as I shall have to say presently, that whilst the framework remains ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... while we trace all the evils which have arisen in its train to extrinsic causes—to human nature, or to superficial and local obstructions. This word of warning brings me back to Mr. Edward Carpenter's essay on Civilization: Its Cause and Cure; for when I first read it he appeared to me to exaggerate out of all proportion the evils in modern life as compared with the good in it: especially did I feel that he erred in that he accounted the evils as permanent and organic characteristics of the civilizing process itself, and believed that they must increase ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... darkness of the narrow streets, the Vicomte was making his way to his lodgings in a state of despair difficult to describe, impossible to exaggerate. Chilled, sobered, and affrighted he looked back and saw how he had thrown for all and lost all, how he had saved the dregs of his fortune at the expense of his loyalty, how he had seen a way of escape—and lost it for ever! No ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... prompt in catching delicate shades of feeling, and the latter did not escape Madame de Palme. She became vaguely conscious of a slightly favorable change in my opinion of her, and it was not long before she even began to exaggerate its extent and to attempt abusing it. For two days she pursued me with her keenest shafts, which I bore good-naturedly, and to which I even responded with some little attentions, for I had still at heart the rude expressions ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... attacked, because it was a present and permanent scandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let us not exaggerate these vices—not the two first, at least. Augustin could not judge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time—and for that matter, those of to-day—would have struck us modern people as very sober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happened ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... make roads, railways and fortifications for Serbia's enemies, and all the males from Serbia have been taken away—who can divine where? The Serbian bishops and priests, and all the leaders of the nation have been carried away too. There are neither leaders nor nation in the Serbian country. I don't exaggerate when I say that all the sufferings of poor and sorely stricken Belgium is still only a shadow of what Serbia sutlers in that dark corner of the world which is called the Balkans, far off from all friendly eyes, friendly ears and hearts. Yet I will not compare the sufferings of ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... them, excepting the Stoics, whose opinion I think I have sufficiently defended; and indeed I have explained what the Peripatetics have to say; excepting that Theophrastus, and those who followed him, dread and abhor pain in too weak a manner. The others may go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue, as usual; and then, after they have extolled it to the skies, with the usual extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to nothing by comparison, and to hold them up to contempt. They who think that praise deserves to be sought ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... cry, many of the fraternity giving it as their opinion that the author had exhausted himself, or, as the technical phrase expresses it, written himself out; and as an unusual tract of success too often provokes many persons to mark and exaggerate a slip when it does occur, the author was publicly accused, in prose and verse, of having committed a literary suicide in this unhappy attempt. The voices, therefore, were, for a time, against Saint Ronan's on the southern ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the deep indignation provoked beyond the Atlantic by the German atrocities and by the more recent deportations, I was inclined to think, for one moment, that I had solved the problem, and that their sympathy for Belgium had brought these soldiers to the rescue. We are so easily inclined to exaggerate the part ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Alma hypnotise her imagination with a new ideal of life. Her talk was constantly of Greystone. She began a correspondence with Mrs. Morton, who did her best to encourage all pleasant anticipations—careful the while, at her husband's bidding and Harvey's too, not to exaggerate the resources of Greystone for a mind and temper such as Alma's. Of course the little town had its musical circle, in which Mrs. Rolfe's talent would find an appreciative reception. Touching on this point to her correspondent, Alma remarked, with emphasised ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... live in Texas, and form colonies in which certain individuals play a very special part They exaggerate to an extreme point the power of preserving provisions in their crops. These materials are not assimilated; they do not form part of the animal's body, and although placed inside it cannot be compared to physiological reserves. It is especially curious that they are not to be utilised ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... prove to her that a life of immoderate pleasure was not conducive to happiness. The young wife had stopped her ears so that she might not hear, and closed her eyes that she might not see. Her mother asked herself if she did not exaggerate the evil. Alas! no. She saw that she was not mistaken. Examining the society around her, men and women: everywhere was feverish excitement, dissipation, and nullity. You might rummage through their brains without finding one practical idea; in all their hearts, there was not one lofty aspiration. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... grievous sin than the presumption of trusting in one's own power, since to rely on the Divine power for obtaining what is unbecoming to God, is to depreciate the Divine power, and it is evident that it is a graver sin to detract from the Divine power than to exaggerate one's own. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with an adversary whose natural dialectical ability had been tempered and sharpened in many campaigns. There is noticeable, too, on the American side, a labored effort at acuteness of discrimination, an adroitness to exaggerate shades of difference practically imperceptible, and an aptitude to give and take offence, not so evident under the preceding Administration. These suggest irresistibly the absence, over Madison the President, of a moderating hand, which had been held over Madison the Secretary of State. It may ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... exaggerate little into much,' said Lucy, with a pretty grimace. 'What is your opinion ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... extent to which the success of her school life depends upon herself. In a new environment, surrounded by what seem to her "multitudes" of new faces, obliged to meet larger demands under strange and untried conditions, she is quite likely to go to the other extreme and exaggerate her own insignificance. Sometimes she is fortunate enough to have an older sister or friend to help her steer her bark through these untried waters, but generally she ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... Amongst our occasional visitors was a well-known gentleman, bearing the proud title of "The biggest liar in Australia." How far he deserved the distinction I should hesitate to say, for men prone to exaggerate are not uncommon in the bush. Sometimes, however, they must have the melancholy satisfaction of knowing that they are disbelieved, when they really do happen to tell the truth. A story of my friend's, which was received with ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of fifteen. But the cleavage of the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... partisan campaigns—all educated men? And has their education prevented them from engaging in, or permitting, or condoning, the briberies, lobbyings, and other corrupt methods which vitiate the actions of your administrations? Perhaps party newspapers exaggerate these things; but what am I to make of the testimony of your civil service reformers—men of all parties? If I understand the matter aright, they are attacking, as vicious and dangerous, a system which has grown up under the natural spontaneous working of your free institutions—are exposing ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Yes, I do not exaggerate. It was my suggestion. One sees so much unhappiness now-a-days, and I wished to be quite sure we were suited ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... assail you daily through the pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a semblance of a zeal for Christ, will evermore distort your words, misrepresent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy your powers ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and turbulent, I should have caught with avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate the ill conduct of the insurgents that their malevolence was not pointed merely to a particular law, but that a spirit inimical to all order has actuated many of the offenders. If the state of things had afforded reason for the continuance of my presence with the army, it would ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... not exaggerate trifles? Why should this man be so derided because he covers his head with an old hat? What of it? Suppose it shows some vanity or eccentricity, why is there more merit in covering that up than in expressing it in the dress? The styles we wear to-day are the derision even of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... William of Wykeham when he was a poor ploughboy "eating his scanty meal off his mother's lap," whatever that means. The story was unknown to Arthur Duck, fellow of All Souls, who wrote Chicheley's life in 1617. It is only the usual attempt, as in the cases of Whittington, Wolsey and Gresham, to exaggerate the rise of a successful man. The first recorded appearance of Henry Chicheley himself is at New College, Oxford, as Checheley, eighth among the undergraduate fellows, in July 1387, in the earliest extant hall-book, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... not exaggerate his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... social ends at the expense of truth, and became more and more irrational as it became more and more useful. Fetichism, the first religion, was the spontaneous result of man's primitive tendency to exaggerate the likeness of all things to himself. It is "less distant from Positivity" than any other sort of theology,[29] for its error is only that it supposes the existence of life wherever it finds activity—an error which can "easily be brought to the test of verification" and corrected. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... exaggerate the talk in the bazars' said a young civilian in the Secretariat. 'Now ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... them. He must learn by many trials to win the victory over himself, if he is ever to be made perfect. 'That is reasonable enough.' And now, suppose that the Gods had given mankind a drug, of which the effect was to exaggerate every sort of evil and danger, so that the bravest man entirely lost his presence of mind and became a coward for a time:—would such a drug have any value? 'But is there such a drug?' No; but suppose that there were; might not the legislator use such a mode of testing courage and cowardice? ...
— Laws • Plato
... denunciations should have been dictated by prejudice. Does Farragut bombard a town occupied by women and children, or does Butler threaten to arm negroes against them? Be sure, then, that this Southern girl will not spare adjectives to condemn them! But do Southern women exaggerate in applying to all Federals the opprobrium deserved by some? Then those women will be criticized for forgetting the reserve imposed upon ladies. This girl knew then what history has since established, and what enlightened ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... personal to be completely shared; for the most part J—— and I read not together, but each by each, he sitting in his morris chair by the desk, I sprawled upon his couch, reading, very likely, different poems, but communicating, now and then, a sudden discovery. Probably I exaggerate the subtlety of our enjoyment, for it is hard to review the unself-scrutinizing moods of freshmanhood. It would be hard, too, to say which enthusiast had the greater enjoyment: he, because these glimpses through magic casements made him merry; I, because they ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... killed this day one of the largest kangaroos we had seen in any part of New South Wales, being from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty pounds weight. These animals live in flocks like sheep; and I do not exaggerate, when I say that some hundreds were seen in the vicinity of this hill; it was consequently named Kangaroo Hill: several beautiful little rills of water have their source in it, but are soon lost in the immeasurable morass at ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... attached to them, seem to have been transferred to Him by the ignorant worshippers, till instead of one Yahweh—one Lord—unique in character and in power, there were as many as there had been Baalim, and they bore the same inferior and sometimes repulsive characters. We cannot exaggerate this division of the Godhead into countless ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... seizing upon the essential characteristics and the salient traits of surrounding objects and events. Other men see things in part fragmentarily; he catches the spirit of the ensemble. And in this way he will very likely exaggerate in his works the general ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the world. So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-centred; not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides love-making. You must remember, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... cannot but think that silence is a censure too gentle of that wickedness which no language can exaggerate, and for which, as it has, perhaps, no example, human kind have not yet provided a name. Murder, parricide, and treason, are modest appellations when referred to that conduct by which a king is betrayed, and a nation ruined, under pretence of promoting its interest, by a man trusted with the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... heads that there was a literal proof in the prelate's jesting epistle of our poet's passion for Laura being a phantom and a fiction. But, possible as it may be, that the Bishop in reality suspected him to exaggerate the flame of his devotion for the two great objects of his idolatry, Laura and St. Augustine, he writes in a vein of pleasantry that need not be taken for grave accusation. "You are befooling us ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... his name was O'Neill, looked at him disgusted. 'Well, begorra!' says he, 'Billy Peter, you don't exaggerate none, do ye! It's a good thing BOTH of 'em didn't bust ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... calmly. "Modesty never got anybody anything but praise, and I prefer something more substantial. However, I never exaggerate or make over-statements, as you should know. What I have said is merely a statement of fact. Also, let me remind you that I am in a hurry. The difficulty of getting hold of that solution is growing greater every minute, and my price is getting ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... without a maximum of practice are worthless, while Meumann[14] thinks that unpracticed and hence unsophisticated subjects are most apt to give unbiased results, as with more experience they tend to fall into ruts and exaggerate their mistakes. The only stipulation we feel it necessary to make in this connection is that the subject be given enough preliminary tests to make him thoroughly familiar with the conditions of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... lightly brought against any class of persons whose creed is, in all essential particulars, the same with our own, and who err only in this, that they believe a great deal too much. It is, therefore, to be regretted, that in their zeal to remove error, so many well-intentioned persons should exaggerate the faults which they combat; for, independently of the wound which is thereby inflicted upon Christian charity, prejudices are but confirmed in proportion as indignation is roused. "You may demonstrate to me, if you can, that we are mistaken in supposing that the souls of the faithful ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... England speedily aroused a decided opposition. Macaulay probably does not much exaggerate when he says that out of twenty well-to-do persons nineteen were ardently loyal and firmly anti-Jacobin. The month of November saw the formation of an "Ante [sic]-Levelling Society, for supporting the Civil Power in suppressing Tumults and maintaining the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... wealth of princes; but there are no means of education for the people. Do public improvements favor intercourse between place and place? So far from this, the traveller cannot pass from town to town, without danger, every mile, of robbery and assassination. I would not overcharge or exaggerate this picture; but its principal features are all too ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... had now just given them a new lease of life. Marie also threw herself into her arms, kissing her with gratitude and emotion. Mere-Grand herself was the only one who did not shed tears. She strove to calm them, begging them to exaggerate ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... loved Jane, she had intended to remain single. It seemed very improbable to her, that any one would seek to gain her affections, unless with the view of enjoying the fortune which she had now the reputation of possessing; it was only natural that she should exaggerate those personal disadvantages, which had lost the heart of him whom she had once loved so truly. She had been so much attached to Hazlehurst, that she shrunk from the idea of ever becoming the wife of another; and she considered herself as ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the course of English history; and when we observe how influential has been the part of England ever since it was fought, and bear in mind that the English race, great as it is, can scarcely be said to have got beyond the morning-time of its existence, we find it difficult to exaggerate the importance of a conflict by which its career for eight hundred years has been deeply and permanently colored. There is not a great event in English or American annals which is not directly traceable to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... over-scrupulous when his own interests were involved. But even though the statement were not deliberately made to heighten the effect of an appeal, we must in any case make allowances for the natural proneness to exaggerate their age which usually characterises men of advanced years, so that any ex parte statement of this kind must be received with due caution. Where, moreover, as in the present case, we have evidence of a directly contradictory kind furnished by independent ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... subordination. To keep up, however, this desirable confidence in rulers, the people should be allowed to see as little of them as possible. It is the mystery which envelopes great men that gives them half their greatness. There is a kind of superstitious reverence for office which leads us to exaggerate the merits of the occupant, and to suppose that he must be wiser than common men. He, however, who gains access to cabinets, soon finds out by what foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else; that rulers have ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune, great as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical conformation,—it was but the crisis, the development, of a long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, the reasoning faculty obstinately neglected; and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... year of my life to know what was the trouble and anxiety which so wrought upon Karine Cunningham. She was young, and it might be that her youth and her sex caused her mentally to exaggerate what was in reality a trifle; yet, even with my slight knowledge of her, I could not believe this ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... will be more or less bad, or at least foolish; the slaves of anger, spite, conceit, vanity, sordid hope, and sordid fear. But let them be as honest and as virtuous as they may, pleasure, terror, and the desire of seeming to have seen or heard more than their neighbours, and all about it, make them exaggerate. If you take apart five honest men, who all stood by and saw the same man do anything strange, offensive, or even exciting, no two of them will give you quite the same account of it. If you leave them together, while excited, an hour ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... truly hunger and thirst after our offenses. Although by God's grace they cannot fasten adultery, murder or like errors upon us, unless by their own fabrication (this shameless class of people abhor no kind of lie), yet they gather up smaller matters, which they afterward exaggerate to the public. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... progress and nature of the Taeping rebellion up to the 25th March 1863 when Gordon assumed the command will make clear what follows to the general reader. It would be as great a mistake to minimise the fighting military strength of the Taepings as it would be to exaggerate it. There was a moment, years before Gordon came on the scene, when the Imperial commanders by a little energy and promptitude might have stamped out the rebellion; but having missed the opportunity the military skill and daring ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... man is of opinion, too, that, should the railway be made, he is entitled to an enormous amount of compensation; and, through his agent, assigns as a reason for his extravagant demand—we do not exaggerate the fact—that he is averse to railways in general, and considers the system as an unjustifiable invasion of the province of horse-flesh. This horse jockey lord thereby excuses his conscience in opposing and endeavouring to plunder the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... hopeless corruption to an end; others treat the movement as useful but of minor import, while they try to save men by belief in dogmatic creeds or by carefully engineered emotional experiences. Meanwhile, no words can exaggerate the fidelity, the vigour, the hopefulness, and the elevated spirit with which many of our best young men and women throw themselves into this campaign for better conditions of living. Surely, the intelligent portion of the Church would better ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... what I say. My heart will belong only to the man who can read it and know its every turn. Our views, without being absolutely identical, must be the same in their breadth and elevation. I have no wish to exaggerate my own merits; doubtless what seem virtues in my eyes have their corresponding defects. All I can say is, I ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with—threatened, perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... number was believed to be small compared to those slain on the retreat, on the slopes, and in the brush below. The streams being in flood from the rain, it was thought that many more were drowned. In estimating hostile losses, however, there is usually a tendency to exaggerate. ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... the rim, same as the other day, but the lion got away quick. Frank saw one lion. Wallace is following Sounder down into the first hollow. Jim has gone over the rim wall after Don. There you are! Four lions playing tag in broad daylight on top of this wall! I'm inclined to believe Clarke didn't exaggerate. But confound the luck! the hounds have split again. They're doing their best, of course, and it's up to us to stay with them. I'm afraid we'll lose some of them. Hello! I hear a signal. That's from Wallace. Waa-hoo! Waa-hoo! There he is, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the books from the artistic point of view is another question. It undoubtedly injured them exactly in proportion as the philanthropic motive led the writers to distort or to exaggerate the truth. It is perfectly justifiable, artistically, to lay the scene of a novel in a workhouse or a gaol, but if the humanitarian impulse leads to any embroidery of or divergence from the truth, the novel is artistically injured, because the selection and grouping of facts should be guided ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sacrifice, my aunt took me to Mass, with my sisters and cousins. We were bathed in tears, and people gazed at us in astonishment when we entered the church, but that did not stop our crying. I even wondered how the sun could go on shining. Perhaps, dear Mother, you think I exaggerate my grief a little. I confess that this parting ought not to have upset me so much, but my soul was yet far from mature, and I had to pass through many trials before reaching the haven of peace, before tasting the delicious fruits of ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he had not been so, he would hardly have been tolerated at the chateau, since he was not particularly beautiful, and not especially refined. He was in holy orders, as his tonsured head and clerical costume bore witness—a costume which, from its tightness and simplicity, only served to exaggerate the unusual proportions of his person. Monsieur the Preceptor had English blood in his veins, and his northern origin betrayed itself in his towering height and corresponding breadth, as well as by his fair hair and light blue eyes. But the most ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... niceties of method and expression which form so large a part of the charm of literary works; acquires a critical delicacy of taste, which renders him fastidiously sensitive to those crudities and roughnesses of speech, which almost necessarily attend an extemporaneous style. He is apt to exaggerate their importance, and to imagine that no excellencies of another kind can atone for them. He therefore protects himself by the toil of previous composition, and ventures not a sentence which he has not leisurely weighed and measured. An audience also, composed of reading people, or accustomed ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... had finished. "It's the most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful thing I ever heard. I don't think we can tell the exact truth about ourselves. We try to be honest; we are savagely in earnest about it, and so we exaggerate the bad things we do, and we often show distrust of the good things we do. That's not a fair picture. I believe you've told me the truth as you see it and feel it, but I don't think it's the real truth. In ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... chosen by a great nation to become its ruler in the gravest period of its history. I remember his dress as if it were but yesterday—snuff-colored and slouchy pantaloons; open black vest, held by a few brass buttons; straight or evening dress coat, with tightly fitting sleeves to exaggerate his long, bony arms, all supplemented by an awkwardness that was uncommon among men of intelligence. Such was the picture I met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We sat down in his plainly furnished parlor and were uninterrupted during the nearly four hours I remained ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Miss Pretorius, if I may say so, I think that you exaggerate the case. Unfortunately we are at war. You claim consideration on the score of loyalty. Are you astonished that I should have mistaken your attitude towards us? Your two brothers only yesterday were in arms ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... exaggerate, as usual," he replied, "and of course in another direction from that in which you ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull |
