"Exaggerated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Greenwell. Yes! and by to-night, a most exaggerated account of the whole affair will be spread over the whole country, and we will be equally suspected by our own people. Those who spread useless falsehoods about us will gladly have a foundation for a monstrous one. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... and sympathy with mental finesse, must also specially adapt this actor to the correct assumption of the character of Iago. Those who have never seen him in it may know by analogy that his merits are not exaggerated. We take it that Iago is a sharply intellectual personage, though his logic, warped by grovelling purpose, becomes sophistry, while lustful and envious intrigues occupy his skilful brain. We have described the beauty of Booth's countenance in repose. But it is equally remarkable for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... large Egyptian garrisons confined in two or three towns, and unable—through fear, as it proved, but on account of formidable enemies, as was alleged—to move outside them. The reports of trouble and hostility were no doubt exaggerated, but still there was a simmering of disturbance below the surface that portended peril in the future; and read by the light of after events, it seems little short of miraculous that General Gordon was able to keep it under by his own personal energy and the magic of his name. When on the point ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... this to Rupert, who, I now perceived for the first time, did not hesitate to laugh at some of his father's notions, as puritanical and exaggerated. He maintained that every one was the best judge of what he liked, and that the sea had produced quite as fair a proportion of saints as the land. He was not certain, considering the great difference there was in numbers, that more good men might not be traced in connection ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... find evidence of the fact, because there we find in exaggerated shapes all the evils I have been defining. The best mode of testing the matter is to take the statistics of some large city which has grown from a country town to a vast business hive within a very few years. Chicago fulfils these conditions precisely. In 1852 ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... apartment, which was some twenty feet square, they found that the embalmer had not exaggerated what he had done. A table with several settles stood in the middle; three couches piled with rushes were placed against the wall. Mats had been laid down to cover the floor and give warmth to the feet, and lamps ready for burning stood upon the table. In a corner stood ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... cookery of France was set off by a certain neatness and comfort which then, as now, peculiarly belonged to England. During the banquet the room was filled with people of fashion, who went to see the grandees eat and drink. The expense of all this splendour and hospitality was enormous, and was exaggerated by report. The cost to the English government really was fifty thousand pounds in five months. It is probable that the opulent gentlemen who accompanied the mission as volunteers laid out nearly as much more from ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exaggerated by the admirers of one side or the other. A hundred people write as if Sophocles had no mysticism and practically speaking no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if St. Paul had no public spirit and no common sense. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... drones at the cost of the workers who are so essential? Is she afraid lest the females might perhaps be induced by their intellect unduly to limit the number of their parasites, which, destructive though they be, are still necessary for the preservation of the race? Or is it merely an exaggerated reaction against the misfortune of the unfruitful queen? Can we have here one of those blind and extreme precautions which, ignoring the cause of the evil, overstep the remedy; and, in the endeavour to prevent an unfortunate accident, bring about a catastrophe? In ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... was fairly typical of those of the early part of the nineteenth century. A rose pattern was applied in coloured calicoes on each alternate block. The geometrical calculation, the miraculous neatness of this work, can scarcely be exaggerated. But this is not the wonder of the thing. The real wonder is the quilting. This consisted in copying the design, petal for petal, leaf for leaf, in needlework upon every alternate block of white muslin. How these workers accomplished the raised designs on plain white muslin is ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... the chief characters there is essential truth of conception. "Every time that I read the play," says Gardiner, "I feel more certain that Browning has seized the real Strafford ... Charles, too, with his faults, perhaps exaggerated, is nevertheless the real Charles." The play was produced at Covent Garden Theater in May, 1837, with Macready as Strafford and Miss Helen Faucit as Lady Carlisle, and was successful in spite of poor scenery and costuming ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the darkness and extent of shadow by which the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the recess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against an ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Church of Rome, is here dated back and fastened upon ages to whose fixed principles it was unknown and alien; and the case of the Church of England is truly hard when the Papal authority of the Middle Ages is exaggerated far beyond its real and historical scope, with the effect only of fastening that visionary exaggeration, through the medium of another fictitious notion of wholesale transfer of the Papal privileges to the Crown, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... coincidence that she should have been first affected by the malady on that particular day. But the baroness's remark had had the effect of fixing in his mind what had immediately preceded it. He remembered how his wife had suddenly taken advantage of a most trivial excuse, to show an amount of exaggerated emotion unusual even for her. He remembered her long absence and her changed expression when she returned, her silence that evening and her increasing taciturnity ever since. The connexion between the paragraph and her conduct seemed certain, and Greifenstein ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... ridiculed and refuted the reasons he had given for returning to that fortress, after his scandalous re-encounter with the French squadron; and, in order to exasperate them to the most implacable resentment, they exaggerated the terrible consequences of losing Minorca, which must now be subdued through his treachery or want of resolution. In a word, he was devoted as the scape-goat of the ministry, to whose supine negligence, ignorance, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... scarlet and pipe-clay were abandoned for khaki, there were some who trembled for the future of war. But then, finding how elegant the new tunic was, how closely it clipped the waist, how voluptuously, with the lateral bustles of the pockets, it exaggerated the hips; when they realized the brilliant potentialities of breeches and top-boots, they were reassured. Abolish these military elegances, standardise a uniform of sack-cloth and mackintosh, you ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the word, parrot-wise, Toni looked very forlorn; and something in her attitude struck Owen with a perhaps exaggerated feeling of remorse. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... sharply. His exaggerated manner, the looseness of his phrasing, the flush on his cheeks were in strange contrast to his usual ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... as other scenes in this poem, are bold and exaggerated. Armies meet like roaring seas; missiles fly from both sides as thick as snow; after the dreadful bath of blood, sun and moon veil their light and turn away from ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... was performed, for your perfect knight omits no courteous detail. Gloves were unknown about the farm, but Grant drew from his pocket a buckskin mitten, and with it slapped Alf suddenly in the face. It was to be regretted that the aggressor had somewhat exaggerated the mediaeval glove idea, and had not previously explained to Alf that to fling one's glove in a foeman's face was one proper form of deadly insult preceding mortal combat, for, ignoring lances, steeds and all about them, the assailed personage immediately "clinched," and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... intolerably. At the far end, in the shadow, the tall figure of Attwater was to be seen leaning on a tree; towards him, with his hands over his head, and his steps smothered in the sand, the clerk painfully waded. The surrounding glare threw out and exaggerated the man's smallness; it seemed no less perilous an enterprise, this that he was gone upon, than for a whelp ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon the size of the women's bonnets, it may be seen that objections to women's overwhelming and obscuring headgear in public assemblies are not entirely complaining protests of modern growth. Other records refer to the annoyance from the exaggerated size of bonnets. In 1769 the church in Andover openly "put to vote whether the parish Disapprove of the Female sex sitting with their Hats on in the Meeting-house in time of Divine Service as being Indecent." The parish did Disapprove, with a capital D, for ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... catchword; and everyone has heard Mark Twain's reply to the reporter asking for advice as to what to cable his paper, which had printed the statement that Mark Twain was dead "Say that the statement is greatly exaggerated." He has admirably taken off humanity's enduring self-conceit in the statement that there isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights. There is something peculiarly American in his warning to young girls not to marry—that is, not to excess! ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... amount of responsibility which rests upon this body can not be exaggerated. When my constituents asked me if I would consent to serve them here if elected, I answered in the affirmative, but I did so with fear and trembling. The people of Virginia have, it is true, reserved to themselves, in a certain contingency, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... kept him at a distance. The girl was afraid to add to the exasperation of her father. It was her unhappy lot to be made more wretched by the only affection which she could not suspect. She could not be angry with it, however, and out of deference for that exaggerated sentiment she hardly dared to look otherwise than by stealth at the man whose masterful compassion had carried her off. And quite unable to understand the extent of Anthony's delicacy, she said to herself that "he didn't care." He probably was beginning at bottom to detest ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... they landed at Chicago, and Joe found that Slippery's tales as to the magnitude of this city had not been exaggerated, for they rode hours and miles upon horseless "cable" cars before Slippery beckoned to Joe to follow him, as they had arrived at their destination, the center of the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... from one good, finished, right-side-up house to another will think I give a very small reason for a very broad fact; but they do not know what they are talking about. They have fallen into a way of looking upon a house only as an exaggerated trunk, into which they pack themselves annually with as much nonchalance as if it were only their preparation for a summer trip to the seashore. They don't strike root anywhere. They don't have to tear up anything. A man comes with cart and horses. There is a stir in the one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to a hard, common sense view of life; that he is fast learning that a race, like an individual, must pay for everything it gets—the price of beginning at the bottom of the social scale and gradually working up by natural processes to the highest civilization. The exaggerated impressions that the first years of freedom naturally brought are giving way to an earnest, practical view ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... there, and to their own advantage and the extension of the Russian power, to collect tribute from the tribes met with during the expedition. Mueller states that every boat was manned with about thirty men—a number which appears to me somewhat exaggerated, if we consider the nature of the Siberian craft and the difficulty of feeding so large a number either with provisions earned along with ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... avoid exaggerated expressions, as: "Delighted to meet you," or "Glad to know you." A simple "How do you do" ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... with humour that is Irish without being too broadly of the brogue, and with people who are distinctive without ever becoming unnatural. The dear old tramping quack-doctor, Oriel's foster-father, in particular might well be praised in language that would sound exaggerated. Mr. DUFFY'S work, depending as it does mainly on a flow of charming and even exquisite side incident, suggests that he is no more than beginning to tap a most extensive reservoir. I greatly hope that this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... sad cry of one who is interested in life primarily, and in art only so far as it can minister to life. It may be strained and exaggerated, but how far more vital a saying than to expand in voluble and vapid enthusiasm over the insight and nobleness of Shakespeare, if one has not really felt one's life ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this basin is exaggerated in the engraving on page 24, owing to the roughness of the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... it is an exaggerated description of the whale still common off the East African Coast. My crew was dreadfully frightened by one between Berberah and Aden. Nearchus scared away the whales in the Persian Gulf by trumpets (Strabo, lib. xv.). The owl-faced fish is unknown ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... you have proves nothing whatever, and even then much of it is exaggerated, which I, in my turn, can prove. I shall sue you for breach ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... fifty miles since the raid, even over rough terrain. He hoped that that would be enough. He was tired, and though the girl attempted to hide her own fatigue, her attempts were becoming more and more exaggerated. He searched out a ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... grotesquely exaggerated, flew about the next day, and at night, though it was very cold and windy, the house was jammed to suffocation. On these lonely prairies life is so devoid of anything but work, dramatic entertainments are so few, and appetite so keen, that a temperature of twenty degrees below zero ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... commanded in this new outbreak, in some way fell into the hands of the Greeks and gave them an important advantage. They at once, in junction with the Servians, attacked the Bulgarians and drove them back. From the accounts of the war, probably exaggerated, this struggle was accompanied by revolting barbarities upon the inhabitants of the country invaded, each country accusing the other of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... desperately in earnest, but not so much so as to be careless of rhetorical effect. In his desire to represent himself as a fallen angel he had done himself no little injustice, as well as grossly exaggerated the power ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... knows that the figure is meant for Jahveh could any shock be felt. The worst sense of the word 'indecent' was accentuated by the prosecutor's saying that the libels were too bad for him to describe. In this way they were withheld from the public intelligence while exaggerated to its imagination. The fact under this is that some bigots wished to punish some Atheists, but could only single them out beside eminent men equally guilty, and forestall public sympathy by pretending they had committed a libel partly obscene. This ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... grave (he lived but fifteen minutes after he was wounded), while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heartrending manner. The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc., were rushing down the hill by hundreds. Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... propose, in this brief discourse, to enter into any defence of the African slave trade. Although the evils of it are greatly exaggerated, its evils and cruelties, its barbarities, are not justified by the most ultra slaveholders of this age. The vile traffic was abolished by the United States, even before the British Parliament prohibited it. All the powers in the world have subsequently prohibited this trade—some of ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... into the west for many days, but encountered terrible gales and turned back; and the captain, to save his face among the mariners, exaggerated the difficulties that he had encountered, declaring that it was idle nonsense to think that anything could be gained by ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... talking with Montacute,' whispered Lord Henry to Coningsby, who was seated next to him. 'Wonderful fellow! You can conceive nothing richer! Very wild, but all the right ideas; exaggerated of course. You must get ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... sequence of events and set in motion new forces whose effects neither he himself nor his fellows can estimate. It is the unique quality of rational beings that in great things and in small things they act from ideas. The magic power of thought cannot be exaggerated. Great conceptions have great consequences, and they rule the world. A new spiritual idea shoots forth its rays and enlightens to larger issues generations of men. There is a mystery in every forth-putting ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... even his own peril; and he felt instead even something of pity for this passionate old woman, who had aged so quickly, whose favourites one by one were dropping off, or at the best giving her only an exaggerated and ridiculous devotion, at the absurdity of which all the world laughed. Here was this old creature at his side, surrounded by flatterers and adventurers, advancing through the world in splendid and jewelled raiment, with trumpets blowing before her, and poets singing her praises, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... activity. It had begun to be recognised with a great burst of enthusiasm and astonishment, that, after all, Mill and Herbert Spencer had not said the last word on all things in heaven and earth. And now there was exaggerated recoil. A fresh wave of religious romanticism was fast gathering strength; the spirit of Newman had reappeared in the place which Newman had loved and left; religion was becoming once more popular among the most trivial souls, and a deep reality among a large ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'Absurd!—exaggerated!—incredible! This is the same story as there was about the horse. It is either caprice or temper, and I am convinced that some change in your manner—nay, I say unconscious, and am far from blaming you—is the cause. Why else did he devote himself to Charles, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come and the moon had risen, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... and so surprised at the conversation he had heard, that he fell into an indiscretion very common, which is, to speak one's own particular sentiments in general terms, and to relate one's proper adventures under borrowed names. As they were travelling he began to talk of love, and exaggerated the pleasure of being in love with a person that deserved it; he spoke of the fantastical effects of this passion, and at last not being able to contain within himself the admiration he was in at the action of Madam de Cleves, he related it to the Viscount ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... sensitiveness, rough as he was and shaggy of skin. His wild imaginations drove him hither and thither at a sad rate. He ought to have the privileges of genius. His tall Potsdam Regiment, his mad-looking passion for enlisting tall men; this also seems to me one of the whims of genius,—an exaggerated notion to have his "stanza" polished to the last punctilio of perfection; and might be paralleled in the history of Poets. Stranger "man of genius," or in more peculiar circumstances, the world ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... characterizes persons uneducated, or unaccustomed to the world, determined to pay a visit to the capital, and to hear at the fountain head, all these wonderful stories, which had probably reached them under a hundred exaggerated forms. No sooner had they entered their lodgings, than they were visited and examined by the police, and their deposition taken down as to their motives for visiting the capital, their place of birth, etc. As a gratuitous piece ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... goes to Holland this week, and I hear we are going to raise another million. There are prodigious discontents in the army: the town got a list of a hundred and fifty officers who desired at once to resign, but I believe this was exaggerated. We are great and very exact disciplinarians; our partialities are very strong, especially on the side of aversions, and none of these articles tally exactly with English tempers. Lord Robert Bertie(1421) received a reprimand the other day by ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... public property. I could not trust my own brother to make extracts from my letters. No one in England can be a judge of the mischief that the letters occasion printed contrary to my wish by friends. We in the Mission think them so infinitely absurd, one-sided, exaggerated, &c., though we don't mean to make them so when ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... claims amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, some wholly fraudulent, some grossly exaggerated and some entirely just. Some of these belonged to persons who had contracts with the Government for constructing and supplying a powerful Navy, or for supplies to the Army. There were demands still larger in amount from the inhabitants of the territory which had been the theatre ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation; but, in truth, this has been greatly exaggerated. He had, no doubt, a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen, and which sometimes produces a laughable confusion in expressing them. He was very much what the French call un etourdi, and from vanity ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... averting the storm would be to interpose a sort of middle course between them, and remarked that the gentleman's observation, as to the windows and doors not fitting well, was very correct, but with regard to the dirtiness of the French it had been greatly exaggerated. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... traits in the character of these same Pilgrim Fathers, I would fain think the accusation exaggerated—if not altogether untrue—and that Ephraim Darke ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... take these slight precautions merely because I have heard a rumor that you have indulged in a threat or two since we last parted, and I know something of your impetuous disposition. No doubt this was exaggerated, but I am a careful man, and prefer to have the 'drop,' and so I sincerely hope you will pardon my keeping you covered during what is really intended as a friendly call. I regret the necessity, but ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... beautiful, charming, healthy work, but even in this there is strife and passion," thought Kovrin, "I suppose that everywhere and in all careers men of ideas are nervous, and marked by exaggerated sensitiveness. Most likely it ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a fresh cigarette, and leant back with the somewhat exaggerated grace of movement which was in reality partly attributable to natural litheness. For some time they smoked in silence, subject to the influence of the dreamy tropic night. Across the river some belated ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play—a witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge in—contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was most picturesquely sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and forgotten, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Fear in the first self-conscious stages of the human mind is a thing which can hardly be exaggerated, and which is even difficult for some of us moderns to realize. But naturally as soon as Man began to think about himself—a frail phantom and waif in the midst of tremendous forces of whose nature and mode of operation he ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... would have been a horror upon an Englishwoman. Upon Mademoiselle Palicsky it was simply an admiration-point of the kind never seen out of Paris, and its effect was instantaneous. Kendal acknowledged it with a bow of exaggerated deference. "C'est parfait!" he said with humility, and lifted a pile of studies off the nearest ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... "It seems all exaggerated," I threw at him; "there was no sense in your giving up your home and traditions and associations—it was unreasonable, fantastic! And to those two who had taken away your ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... "He's not much worse than I used to be," she said. "I used to call America an uncivilized country, you remember. I suppose I—and Mr. Heathcroft—were exaggerated types of a certain kind of English. We were ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... government. Paris welcomed him with the most lively expressions of admiration, wherever he went people crowded round him to gaze on the features of this famous warrior. But this triumph was soon eclipsed by his exaggerated love of money, which ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... busy. Besides their one maid there were the waiters sent by the caterer, and Eddy was exceedingly troublesome. He was a nervous boy, and unless directly under his father's eye, almost beyond restraint when impressed, as he was then, with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. His activities took especially the form of indiscriminate and superfluous helping the guests to refreshments, until the waiters waxed fairly murderous, and one of them even appealed to Anna Carroll, intimating in Eddy's ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fancy. The aged man sketched in the following pages was as truly interested in his garden and fruit-trees after he had passed his fourscore years as any enthusiastic horticulturist in his prime, and the invalid, whose memory dwells in my heart, found a solace in flowers which no words of mine have exaggerated. If this book tends to bring others into sympathy with Nature, one of its chief missions ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... with an exaggerated start; she was a picturesque figure at that moment in a big white overall, and with a scarf of her favourite mauve tied over ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... of breakfast I was certain that I had taken a very exaggerated view of the situation. It would be a pity to cut short a pleasant visit and risk offending some of my oldest friends on such purely fanciful grounds. Besides, I just remembered that I had given my cook a holiday and that if I went ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... number of deaths at the stake has been much over-estimated by popular imagination; but the sum of suffering caused by the methods of the system and the punishments that fell short of death can hardly be exaggerated. ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... into the laughing, sun-browned face. "If Uncle Paul were to see you now, he might find it hard to believe I hadn't—exaggerated ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Zosimus[1] asserts, is extremely improbable and altogether unproven. However that may be, after one of his three sieges of Rome, Alaric carried Galla Placidia off as a hostage. He seems, according to Zosimus, to have treated her with courtesy and even with an exaggerated reverence, as the sister of the emperor and the daughter of Theodosius, but she was compelled to follow in his train and to see the ruin of Lucania and Calabria. For, as a matter of fact and reality, Galla Placidia was the one hope of the Goths and this became ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... content to leave the government to the "great governing families"—i.e., to defer to caste, which is in principle the same as deferring to a king, who is supposed to rule by divine right. Mr. Bradford also gives a somewhat exaggerated idea of the importance of the force of personality when he declares that the mass of the people have no "views" on public questions; all they want is to be well governed. The late Professor Freeman Snow, of Harvard University, U.S., was a supporter of the ultra-democratic ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... jubilee, 1300, he was one of the priors of the Republic. There is no shrinking from fellowship and cooperation and conflict with the keen or bold men of the market-place and council hall, in that mind of exquisite and, as drawn by itself, exaggerated sensibility. The doings and characters of men, the workings of society, the fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... him an exaggerated courtesy, and, despite the grey threads that began to glint in her auburn hair, ran up the stairway as lightly as a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... all hope from me," Geoffrey declared. "Would you suspect me of exaggerated sentiment, if I said my life has been yours for a long time and is yours now, for it is true. I will go back to the work that is best for me, merely adding that, if ever there is either trouble or adversity in which I can aid you—though God forbid, for your sake, that should ever be so—you have ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... woman seemed to spit like a cat at him! She had the tongue of a serpent and a vicious temper. He hated her! Wallie removed his hat with exaggerated politeness and decided never to have anything more ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... last you are beginning to see things in their true light, and to take my part," says Mr. Kelly, with exaggerated gratitude. "Now, indeed, I feel I have not lived in vain! You have, though at a late hour, recognized the extraordinary promptitude that characterizes my every action. While another might have been hesitating, I drew the curtain. I am ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... inferior caste, even though all political inequalities be removed." I acknowledge this defect of manners in the multitude, and grant that it is an obstacle to intercourse with the more improved, though often exaggerated. But this is a barrier which must and will yield to the means of culture spread through our community. The evil is not necessarily associated with any condition of human life. An intelligent traveller tells us, that ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... exaggerated a notion of the wisdom of governments as of their power. He speaks with the greatest disgust of the respect now paid to public opinion. That opinion is, according to him, to be distrusted and dreaded; its usurpation ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... else, of the portrait of one who was a most undoubted Puritan, drawn by Lucy Hutchinson. If this portrait betrays the hand of a wife, Clarendon's portrait of Falkland betrays the hand of a friend, and even a beloved husband is not more likely to be the object of exaggerated, though sincere praise, than the social head and the habitual host of a circle of literary men. At all events Lucy Hutchinson is painting what she thought a perfect Puritan would be; and her picture presents to us, not a coarse, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Her heart could not have been troubled by what her reason foresaw; but, nevertheless, her care and attention were extreme, without any airs of affectation or acting. The Duc de Bourgogne, simple and holy as he was, and full of the idea of his duty, exaggerated his attention; and although there was a strong suspicion of the small-pox, neither quitted Monseigneur, except ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... truth, perplexed Sofia to exasperation; that is to say, as much as it offended her. For Victor the man seemed to entertain an exaggerated yet deeply rooted respect, approaching actual awe, which he tried his best to carry off with a swagger; for to hold anybody in any degree of deference was, one judged, somehow deplorable, even shameful, in the code of Sturm; but in Victor's presence the fellow's ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the sexes, and his intercourse with the world had been too infrequent for the idea to have been modified in any appreciable degree. It was natural, therefore, that this walk across the fields in the company of Reine should assume an exaggerated importance in his eyes. He felt himself troubled and yet happy in the chance afforded him to become more closely acquainted with this young girl, toward whom a secret sympathy drew him more and more. But he did not know how to begin conversation, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... whole, it will be clear, I think, to the impartial reader from this rapid survey that the helplessness and awkwardness of a fish out of water has been much exaggerated by the thoughtless generalisation of unscientific humanity. Granting, for argument's sake, that most fish prefer the water, as a matter of abstract predilection, to the dry land, it must be admitted per contra that ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in the face of derision and opposition, has persistently maintained the doctrine of Biogenesis. Another, larger and with greater pretension to philosophic form, has defended Spontaneous Generation. The weakness of the former school consists—though this has been much exaggerated—in its more or less general adherence to the extreme view that religion had nothing to do with the natural life; the weakness of the latter lay in yielding to the more fatal extreme that it had nothing to do ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... old Italian wood-divinities, the FAUNS, who had goats' feet and all other characteristics of the Satyrs greatly exaggerated, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... American papers of Turkish atrocities at Sassoun are sensational and exaggerated. The killing was in a conflict between armed Armenians and Turkish soldiers. The grand vizier says it was necessary to suppress insurrection, and that about fifty Turks were killed; between three and ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Spore-plants, the Cryptogamia possessing a vascular system, was more prominent in early geological periods than at present. It is true that the dominance of the Pteridophyta in Palaeozoic times has been much exaggerated owing to the assumption that everything which looked like a Fern really was a Fern. But, allowing for the fact, now established, that most of the Palaeozoic fern-like plants were already Spermophyta, there remains a vast mass of Cryptogamic forms of that period, and the familiar ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... sure—yet, only I wanted to know about the food—" Robin retreated step by step toward the door, her limp exaggerated by the movement. "I'm waiting for word from ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men, those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... deal of the provincial still about him, displayed much useful comradeship, catching various artistic phrases as they fell from his companions' lips, and already preparing in his mind the articles which would herald the advent of the band and make them known. And Mahoudeau purposely exaggerated his intentional roughness, and clasped his hands like an ogre kneading human flesh; while Gagniere, in ecstasy, as if freed from the everlasting greyishness of his art, sought to refine sensation to the utmost limits of intelligence; and Dubuche, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or other. With her it was very difficult to distinguish between craft ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... nothing seemed to give so much pleasure as when I doled out a small piece. Perhaps in time even the Mongol will look clean. Asiatics as a rule know little about soap; they clean their clothes by pounding, and themselves by rubbing; but sometimes they put an exaggerated value upon it. A Kashmir woman, seeing herself in a mirror side by side with the fair face of an English friend of mine, sighed, "If I had such good soap as yours I too would ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... and a very comfortable sitter into the bargain. Moreover he was a very agreeable old man, tremendously puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore exactly the furred dressing-gown that Lyon would have chosen. He was proud of his age but ashamed of his infirmities, which however he greatly exaggerated and which did not prevent him from sitting there as submissive as if portraiture in oils had been a branch of surgery. He demolished the legend of his having feared the operation would be fatal, giving an explanation ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of the palace, she was still careful to observe the same silence. The servants followed her example. This elderly chaperon of Theresa's had been brought up in a convent, and had come out into the world with an exaggerated estimate of her acquirements and position. But ten or fifteen years' experience of the selfishness and crude egoism of youth had tended to dissipate such sentiments, and she eventually took a situation ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... raised it to his lips with exaggerated courtesy, and retained it, looking into her eyes in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the chiefs found means to let the marquis know, in a more or less ingenious manner, the exaggerated price they set upon their services. One modestly demanded the governorship of Brittany; another a barony; this one a promotion; that one a command; and all ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... huntsman to the Prince de Conti, to whom he owed his fortune. A plasterer, and proprietor of a small house in Paris, on about the highest point of the Faubourg Saint-Martin,[*] near the rue d'Allemagne, he affected an exaggerated civism, which masked an unfailing fidelity to the Bourbons, and he in some mysterious way afforded protection to Sisters Marthe and Agathe (Mesdemoiselles de Beauseant and de Langeais), nuns who had escaped from the Abbey of Chelles, and were, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... expressive name of "Indian devil," whose power and daring are such that a party of veteran hunters have been known to withdraw from a section frequented by him, simply to avoid a fight. While the stories about them may be exaggerated at times, there is no doubt that such animals exist, and there is good reason to hold them ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... "study" is a vulgar word; every word is vulgar which a man uses to give the world an exaggerated notion of himself or his condition. When the wretched bagman, brought up to give evidence before Judge Coltman, was asked what his trade was, and replied that "he represented the house of Dobson and Hobson," he showed himself to be a vulgar, mean-souled wretch, and was most properly reprimanded ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sledge-meter was then lying over on its side with a helpless expression. It indicated twenty-two miles, making, so we thought, a total of forty-three miles in the twenty-two and a quarter hours since leaving the depot. Observations for position next day proved that in its dying effort it exaggerated the truth; the total ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... exaggerated. But Constantinople stood to me for all the uproar of life, and Greece for the calm and beauty and happiness, the great Sanity of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... everywhere, were much the same thing to him; if he distinguished it was in favor of those who did not suppose themselves cultivated. If again he had a choice it was for the females; they seemed to him more amusing than the males, who struck him as having an exaggerated reputation for humor. He did not care much for Clementina's past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray, and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he had known some of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... affair spread in the community, carrying with it exaggerated reports, that "Sylver was really murdered; was gagged and left to die alone," and thus on. When passing the streets in the city, I would be inquired of, if such were really the facts, to which I would respond in the negative, that he died in the hospital with attendants about him, but ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... much as far as they were concerned, for they knew the value of her words, and did not repeat them; but she uttered them to other people as well, and they were repeated, as all village talk is repeated, and commented upon, and exaggerated, and no one did more toward the stirring up of strife, and the making of two parties in Gershom, than did Mrs Jacob. She did her husband no good, but she did him less harm than she might have done had she been a woman of a higher and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... I will touch upon; it has often been asserted, especially in romances of the ocean, that as a ship sinks the suction creates a tremendous whirlpool which engulfs all things in its vicinity. This statement is naturally very much exaggerated. People swimming about may be drawn down by the suction of the foundering ship, but in my opinion no lifeboat which is well manned is in danger of this whirlpool. Even old sailors, deluded by this superstition, have rowed away in haste from a sinking ship, when they might have stood ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... he would be one of their models; and though the thoughtlessness of youth had made him the type haunting himself by day and night, the world never made a distinction. Right and wrong were things that to him only murmured in distrust; they would be blemishes exaggerated from simple error; but the judgment of society would never overlook them. He must now choose between a resolution to bear the consequences at home, or turn his back upon all that had been near and dear to him,—be a wanderer struggling ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... And furthermore, I don't give a damn," Rand lied. "If somebody wants me to look into it, and pays me my possibly exaggerated idea of what constitutes fair compensation, I will. And I'll probably come up with Fleming's murderer, dead or alive. But until then, it is simply no epidermis off my scrotum. And I advise you to adopt a ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... with its high-flown epithets and exaggerated metaphor, a language in which Stanislas McKay, from his natural aptitude and this charming ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... thousand years of civilization? Has Israel no contribution to offer here but the old quarrel with Christianity? But that quarrel shrinks into comparative concord beside the common peril from the resurrected gods of paganism, from Thor and Odin and Priapus. And it was always an exaggerated quarrel—half misunderstanding, like most quarrels. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Anselm believed God was other than One. Jesus but applied to himself distributively—as logicians say—those conceptions of divine sonship ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... then,—added to a singularly exaggerated estimate of the critical importance of the testimony of our two oldest Codices, (another of the "discoveries of later times," concerning which I shall have more to say by-and-by,)—must explain why the opinion is even popular that ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... difficult character of the country; the interposition of the Federal army between the two Confederate wings, which rendered a long detour necessary in reaching Lee; and the general confusion and dismay attending Jackson's fall. It would be difficult, indeed, to form an exaggerated estimate of the condition of Jackson's corps at this time. The troops had been thrown into what seemed inextricable disorder, in consequence of the darkness and the headlong advance of the Second ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... understood her business would take it back at once, without hesitation, contest, or expostulation—proceed with even exaggerated care to smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level of their understandings, return it to them thus modified, and lay on the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting, perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this sort of attack, provided ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... incredible story may have originated from an ill-told account of the war bulls of the Caffres, exaggerated into fable, after the usual manner of the Arabs, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... the Established Church choose their wives. There are thousands such, living in serene girlhood, wifehood, or widowhood, to be found in the villages and country towns of dear old England. With but very few exceptions, they are kindly-natured, unimaginative, imbued with a shrinking dislike of any exaggerated display of emotion; in some ways amazingly broad-minded, in others curiously limited in their outlook on life. Such women, as a rule, present few points of interest to students of human nature, for they are almost invariably true to type, their virtues and their defects ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... inform me in six months, perhaps not before a year. The following lines represent my part of the contract, and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or heard during two months' residence upon the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... situations and feelings of any character, whether he personally likes him or not. Largely made up of Emotion are: (1) true Sentiment, which is fine feeling of any sort, and which should not degenerate into Sentimentalism (exaggerated tender feeling); (2) Humor, the instinctive sense for that which is amusing; and (3) the sense for Pathos. Pathos differs from Tragedy in that Tragedy (whether in a drama or elsewhere) is the suffering of persons who are able to struggle ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... indignant poems of Whittier and Lowell or the orations of Sumner and Phillips. It presented the thing concretely and dramatically, and in particular it made the odious Fugitive Slave Law forever impossible to enforce. It was useless for the defenders of slavery to protest that the picture was exaggerated, and that planters like Legree were the exception. The system under which such brutalities could happen, and did sometimes happen, was doomed. It is easy now to point out defects of taste and art in this masterpiece, to show that the tone is occasionally melodramatic, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... streak of light that streamed on the river from the big fire on the opposite shore, disclosing the outline of two men bending to their work, and a third figure in the stern flourishing the steering paddle, his head covered with an enormous round hat, like a fantastically exaggerated mushroom. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... was fond of saying that, if improvements are allowed to do their best, the time will come when, as he expressed it, "it will not pay to be rich." The workers will be so comfortable that the care of a great capital will more than offset any additional comfort a man can get by owning it. Grotesquely exaggerated as this claim may appear to be, it was based on serious economic study. There are forces at work which, if they have free play, will carry human life very far in the direction of the State so described, with ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark |
