"Exaggeration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early date as the Second City, so that Schliemann's accuracy has been confirmed in this instance. The citadel itself seemed far too small to fill the place which Troy occupies in Homer's description, even allowing for poetic exaggeration. In 1890, the year of his death, Schliemann was on the way to the solution of the problem, and in 1892, his coadjutor, Professor Doerpfeld, finally proved that the Sixth City, lying four strata above Schliemann's Troy, was the true Ilion ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... read of great Americans, from Washington to the man who has brought this very light to such perfection, turning over page after page of well-nigh incredible description of the country which has raised the system of "booming" to a high art, till my brain reels with an Arabian Nightish flavour of exaggeration, and turning off the electric current, I am gradually lulled to sleep by the rhythmical vibrations of the steamer, the sole reminder that I am in reality sleeping upon a ship and about to enjoy ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the same, it matters not what the exciting cause may be. It is an exaggerated physiological process. If there is inflammation of any part of the body it means that there is an exaggeration of function. Its intensity will be in keeping with the exciting cause. If the cause is intense heat or cold, or a corroding acid or alkali, the local action may be great enough to destroy the part; the inflammation following will be of the contiguous ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... a slight tendency to exaggeration, Katharine decidedly hits the mark," he said, and lying back in his chair, with his opaque contemplative eyes fixed on the ceiling, and the tips of his fingers pressed together, he depicted, first the horrors of the streets of Manchester, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... reflect on what I am about to say to him. I go through my sentences to the end before I open my lips. He dislikes exaggeration, and checks me if I use a strong word; but surely life sometimes needs strong words, and those which are tame may be further from the truth than those which burn. When he first began to think about buying the house, I was surprised and talked with less restraint than is ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... had said that she would not let him go. Suppose then that he went and told her mother the story. There would be one more person in the secret, for though she might die of grief, she would never tell a human being; she could not ever be called upon to do so, by the maddest exaggeration of the principles of honour. She would suffer horribly, but she would not take what was hers. She could have no use for the fortune, except to give it to her daughter, who had the use of it already. Her peace would be destroyed for ever, and there would be no change in the conditions ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... because I don't believe it. The philosophy of Indian warfare is, to kill your enemy and not get killed yourself, and they can take cover more skillfully than any other people. In all our Indian wars, from the Atlantic westward, with regulars or militia, I believe it would not be an exaggeration to say that the whites have lost ten to one in killed and wounded. But the battle of Wood Lake was quite an open fight, and so rapidly conducted and concluded that we have a very accurate account of the loss of the enemy. He had no time or opportunity to withdraw ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the first books about fighting in the air, is written by a fighting airman. The author depicts the daily life of the flying officer in France, simply and with perfect truth; indeed he describes heroic deeds with such moderation and absence of exaggeration that the reader will scarcely realise that these stories are part of the annals of a squadron which for a time held a record in the heaviness ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the time of the war with China; but the details were to a great extent imaginary,—altogether imaginary as to the appearance of Russian troops. Pictures of the engagements with the Russian fleet were effective, despite some lurid exaggeration. The most startling things were pictures of Russian defeats in Korea, published before a single military engagement had taken place;—the artist had "flushed to anticipate the scene." In these prints the Russians were depicted as fleeing in utter ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... forget it."—Jagor, Viajes por Filipinas (Vidal's Spanish version). Jagor was speaking particularly of the settled parts of the Bicol region. Referring to the islands generally, his "half of the children" would be a great exaggeration.—TR. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... graces. He seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if it were not a gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of the man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to every such man, whatever his original breeding, as certainly as the sun belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which he found ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of Hindenburg is wider than the east—and the west; it permeates the business world and stiffens the economic backbone of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, "See the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled. Most assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Christians of other Churches, earnestly and lovingly endeavouring to create as many points of contact as were compatible with holding fast the truth. The errors of all religions run into each other, just as their truths do. There was, no doubt, some exaggeration in the statement of the Roman Catholic authority who declared that "there is but one bad religion, and that is the religion of the man who professes what he does not believe." But there was no reason why, because the Church of England had ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... cannot forget how the majority and the minority in this House were composed; I cannot forget that the majority contained almost all those gentlemen who are returned by large bodies of electors. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that there were single Members of the majority who had more constituents than the whole minority put together. I speak advisedly and seriously. I believe that the number of freeholders of Yorkshire exceeds that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the round world were discovered, at thy chiding, O Lord: at the blasting of the breath of thy displeasure. He shall send down from on high to fetch me: and shall take me out of many waters.' What protects such words from the imputation of mere Eastern exaggeration? The firm conviction that God is the deliverer, not only of David, but of all who trust in God; that the whole majesty of God, and all the powers of nature, are arrayed on the side of the good and of the oppressed. 'The Lord shall reward me after ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... of ornament and extreme simplicity of style, and the evident intention on the part of the translator to suppress all that may not have appeared to him sufficiently probable, and all that might justly be taxed with exaggeration;" and he adds that "apart from the interest which the writing and phraseology of the work may possess for those who study the history of languages, it is rather curious to see how a Tatar translator sets to work to bring within the range of his readers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... stoic school produced the lofty characters of Cremutius Cordus, Thraseas, Arria, Helvidius Priscus, Annaeus Cornutus, and Musonius Rufus, admirable masters of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity and exaggeration of this school arose from the horrible cruelty of the Caesars. The continual thought of a good man was how to inure himself to suffering, and prepare himself for death. Lucian, in bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, but gave utterance to the loftiest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... as men in high office have very often pacified the anger of their princes; but by untimely opposition and reproof, did often excite him the more to frenzy; often also informing Augustus of his actions, and that too with exaggeration, and taking care, I know not with what intention, that what he did should not be unknown to the emperor. And at this Caesar soon became more vehemently exasperated, and, as if raising more on high than ever the standard of his contumacy, without any regard to the safety of others or of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the drill sergeant on his job, it seemed to him that he had never seen a soldier work before. In figure, in pose, in action there was a perfection about him that awakened at once admiration and envy. Below the average height, yet not insignificant, erect, without exaggeration, precise in movement without angularity, swift in action without haste, he was indeed a joy ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the deceptive appearance which nature sometimes assumes, the exaggeration, almost unavoidable, by partially informed observers, of the details of a phenomenon, or its duration; improper, ill-understood, or badly translated expressions, figurative language, and a practical style; erroneous explanations of emblematical ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Overestimation. — N. overestimation &c. v.; exaggeration &c. 549; vanity &c. 880; optimism, pessimism, pessimist. much cry and little wool, much ado about nothing; storm in a teacup, tempest in a teacup; fine talking. V. overestimate, overrate, overvalue, overprize, overweigh, overreckon[obs3], overstrain, overpraise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... considerable scene. The idealist driven into squalid actualities deserves a martyr's crown. In one single misfortune he suffers all the calamities of the human race, and in one personal horror he sees the death, emptiness, and corruption of all human endeavours. In this exaggeration, these mystics show their genius; they suffer too much in order that ordinary people may suffer a little less. Poor Orange! He is certainly fine, for, even if I discard the mannerisms, the eccentricity, the possibly natural self-sufficiency, all that is essential in his character ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... again decoyed into the society of ladies and gentlemen, and have accepted an invitation to pass a few days at Neesdale Park with Mr. Travers,—christened Leopold, who calls you "his old friend,"—a term which I take for granted belongs to that class of poetic exaggeration in which the "dears" and "darlings" of conjugal intercourse may be categorized. Having for that visit no suitable garments in my knapsack, kindly tell Jenkes to forward me a portmanteau full of those which I habitually wore as Kenelm ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the inspired writers had themselves written in English. It was forgotten that they were Orientals, who wrote in the language natural to them, with the customary grandiloquence of orientalism, with the poetic exaggeration which, in the East, was the breath of life. It was forgotten also that they wrote in ignorance of those natural truths which men had now acquired by experience and induction, and not by revelation. Their truth was the truth of heaven, not the truth of earth. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... man, and the sweat streamed down his face as he stood under the blazing sun to sketch a fearful picture of the monstrous doom which was hanging over the city and its inhabitants. He spoke with pompous exaggeration, in a shrill, harsh voice, wiping his face meanwhile with his white linen robe or gasping for air, when breath failed him, like a fish stranded on the beach. All this, however, did not trouble his audience, for the hatred that inspired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Recorder that it had been the duke's intention to seize the Tower and the Isle of Wight, and to "have destroyed the city of London and the substantiall men of the same."(1346) This was, of course, an exaggeration, although there is little doubt that the duke was preparing to get himself named again Protector by the next parliament. On the 1st December he was brought from the Tower by water to Westminster, the mayor and aldermen having received strict orders to keep the city well guarded.(1347) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... glass necessary for each one. It reveals the defects in the accommodation, and serves for the quick determination of refraction. So, in saying that this little instrument is very ingenious and very practical, Dr. Javal has used no exaggeration.—La Nature. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... such, within the bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, to speak of the Boke Named the Governour as the very Magna Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the end that the student ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... your Lordship's consideration. I am quite conscious that the outlines I have drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of the feelings they are intended to illustrate; but I claim for them one merit—their truth and freedom from exaggeration. I may have fallen short of the mark, but I have never overshot it: and while I have pointed out what appears to me, to be injustice on the part of others, I hope I have carefully ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... now from ridicule, or perhaps disgrace! Mr Delvile has been detected watching me in disguise! he has been discovered at this late hour meeting me in private! The story will reach his family with all the hyperbole of exaggeration;—how will his noble mother disdain me! how cruelly shall I sink before the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... we ascended to the top of a high hill, and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration to set it down at 200,000." Steven's Narrative and Final Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific, vol ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the shot which opened the battle of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of humane societies condemning all vivisection is due to the exaggeration of a good sentiment and to ignorance of first principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must explain what a right is and how men ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... no exaggeration. At sight of the gipsy band, the child so recently taken from their clutches shrank and cowered against ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... of wonderful stories but I shall mention only two here which, though evidently not free from exaggeration, will give an idea of what the people came to regard him as capable of achieving, and also of the powers and attributes which he used to ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... gold-seekers of the present day are literary men, for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen; but at the time we speak of, almost the whole tribe were authors. Borel, in 1654, makes the list amount to 4000; but this is an exaggeration; many of his names being imaginary, and some cut into several pieces. We have before us, however, a catalogue by a less zealous compiler, brought between eighty and ninety years further down, containing about 2500 treatises by about 900 authors—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... That was exaggeration, of course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... seen it passing by in the street what age would she have guessed its owner to be? Something in the thirties; but perhaps in the late thirties? She wasn't quite certain about it. Really it is so difficult to look at yourself quite impartially. And she did not wish to fall into exaggeration, to be hypercritical. She wished to be strictly reasonable, to see herself exactly as she was. The eyes were brilliant, but did they look ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... whose growth has been retarded by poor soil and contracted space. Her lips had taken on a smiling upward curve that gave a new expression to her face, and now her frequent laugh was spontaneous and contagious. Her humor was of the western flavor—droll exaggeration—a little grim, while in her unexpected turns of speech, Prentiss found a constant ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and noiselessly about the room. His miserable, thin legs and the gown of his dress stood out stiff and straight as he turned quickly. And—most horrible of all—he had for a head the skull of a large white bird with a long beak, which was a monstrous exaggeration of a sea-mew's skull, bleached by the sun and wind and waves, that I had the previous summer found upon the beach at the Island. (I believe this old man's visit coincided with the time when I was worst, almost in danger.) After he had ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the cold stone under the stranger's porch, these two orphans: Philip's arms round his brother's waist, Sidney leaning on his shoulder, and imparting to him—perhaps with pardonable exaggeration, all the sufferings he had gone through; and, when he came to that morning's chastisement, and showed the wale across the little hands which he had vainly held up in supplication, Philip's passion shook him from limb to limb. His impulse was to march straight ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... course, a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason of their ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... rather than grapple with hideous concrete problems—this has been the tendency of the religious spirit in all ages, a tendency of which positive asceticism, with its mortification of the body, and its ideal of virginity, and marriage regarded as more or less a concession to the flesh, is only an exaggeration. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... read the foregoing remarks, and in which there is not the least exaggeration or departure from the truth, will imagine, doubtless, that the modern ecclesiastical authorities of the peninsula have, at least, attempted to rectify all that is absurd and irreverent in those practices, and to strip a ceremony so august and imposing as that of the mass of all that a want ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... crowning work of his long life of public service. His style is of that best kind which is never remarked upon, but serves as a clear medium through which the events he portrays are seen without distortion or exaggeration. He has done his country one more service in entire consistency with those that have filled up the whole course of his honorable and beneficent life. We have said that this is fit to be the crowning work of Mr. Giddings's life; but we trust that it is far from being the last that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,—extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling,—in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition—the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital—from every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... result of the family feud between the two dynasties. That came to an end in 1868, when the murder of Kara-George in 1817 by the agency of Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c] was avenged by the lunatic assassination of the brilliant Prince Michael Obrenovi['c] III. It is no exaggeration to say that, from the point of view of the Serbian patriot, the only salvation of his country in 1903 lay in getting rid of the Obrenovi['c] dynasty, which had become pro-Austrian, had no longer the great gifts possessed by its earlier members, and undoubtedly ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... obtained by the close approximation to the straight line in the lateral ribs of the leaf, fig. 12. The longer the eye rests on these temperate curvatures the more it will enjoy them, but it will assuredly in the end be wearied by the morbid exaggeration of the last example. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... sand the man was sieving. "I will when I grow up," the undisturbed child replied. "I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!" And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter "Oh, pull down ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... development, combined with its undoubted docility and aptitude for comprehending signs, have led to exaggerated ideas of its intelligence, which probably does not exceed that of the horse, and is far inferior to that of the dog. But from time immemorial it has been surrounded by a halo of romance and exaggeration. Mr. Sanderson says, however, that the natives of India never speak of it as an intelligent animal, "and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom, as do the fox, the crow, and the monkey;" but he overlooks the fact that the Hindu god of wisdom, Gunesh, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... father was pressed for ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements—all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth—were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to a young man of Osborne's age to feel himself continually hampered for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the liberal—almost luxurious table at the Hall, came off the estate; so ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the speaker, the incomprehensible change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence. The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part of the dwelling by the distant gale became perceptible. An angry flash sprang ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... a proclamation, which from one end to the other offends against truth. It has been published in many works. The season of the year for hostile landing is there very dexterously placed in the foreground; all the rest is a deceitful exaggeration. It must be observed that the proclamations which Bonaparte regarded as calculated to dazzle an ever too credulous public were amplifications often ridiculous and incomprehensible upon the spot, and which only excited the laughter of men of common sense. In all Bonaparte's correspondence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... wings of a bat. Owen describes one whose sweep of wings exceeded twenty feet, and many have been found of every gradation of size down to that of a bat. There is no reason why they should not be as large as More says; and I for my part do not suspect him of exaggeration. Some have supposed that a late, lingering individual may have suggested the idea of the fabulous dragon—an idea which seems to be in the minds of nearly all the human race, for in the early records ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... not forget certain accessories—particularly portraits of your ancestors. They should ornament the castle walls where you regale the country nobles. One must use tact in the selection of this family gallery. There must be no exaggeration. Do not look too high. Do not claim as a founder of your race a knight in armor hideously painted, upon wood, with his coat of arms in one corner of the panel. Bear in mind the date of chivalry. Be satisfied with the head of a dynasty whose gray beard hangs over a well-crimped ruff. I saw a ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... years ago, the front gable was now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a ruinous wooden fence, of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be a garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was now infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations and out-buildings ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... morbid ideas, my dear fellow!" said Lavendar in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's trouble enough in the world without foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was 'grave-ripe,' as she often said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The doctor's certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her heart, and the neighbours would very soon set your mind at rest by describing the number of times poor old ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hall while its roof echoed the jingling tail-piece of another popular ditty, which tickled Beatrice's fancy hugely. In it the singer expressed, without exaggeration and without flattery, a good deal of the popular London attitude toward the pursuit of pleasure and the love of pleasure resorts. I recall phrases like: "Give my regards to Leicester Square—Greet the girls in Regent ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... enthusiastic a eulogy of his beloved nurse and preserver that more than once Lady Wendula, smiling, stopped him, accusing him of permitting his grateful heart to lead him to such exaggeration that the maiden he wished to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no journal during a greater portion of the time in which I was absent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when detailing events which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. Another reason was, that the incidents to be narrated were of a nature ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... week had passed, the four room-mates were together in their old rooms, and Marion was made a heroine. All she had done for Nellie was exaggerated, with that generous exaggeration of which girls ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... in hypnosis this condition is artificially increased. (c) Suggestion explains all. Despite the fact that the members of the Nancy school regard the condition as purely physiological and simply an exaggeration of the normal, they consider it, in its profound stages at all ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... than his own transgressions, after such a bringing up as his, and would his mother say that nobody ought to marry him? Besides, to whom had she given Di? They were not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened her own cause by trying to reinforce it with all the Stympson farrago, the exaggeration of which Dermot, after his own meeting with Henry Alison, and with Prometesky to corroborate him, was fully prepared to explode, to the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... December 23, and note. The reader will observe the tone of exaggeration in the letter as compared ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... is, the scene holds and haunts one with an impression of absolute truth, For the end, marked like all by an almost grim avoidance of sentimentality, I shall only refer you to the book itself. After reading it you will, I hope, not think me guilty of exaggeration when I call it, slight though it is, one for which its author has deserved well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... gratuities, &c., till he had received his dress of investiture, and had merely promised to pay what his predecessor had paid—that when about to set out, the memorandum of what his predecessor had paid was put into his hand, and it was then too late to remonstrate or draw back. There may be some exaggeration in the rate of the gratuities demanded; but that he has to pay them to the persons named I have no doubt whatever, because; all men in charge of districts have to pay them to those persons, whether they hold the districts ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... decisions. Marx Leva, Forrestal's assistant, told the story of a Forrestal subordinate who complained that some admirals were still opposed to naval aviation, to which Forrestal replied that he knew some admirals who still opposed steam engines.[9-1] Forrestal's humorous exaggeration underscored the tenacity of traditional attitudes in the Navy. Although self-interest could never be discounted as a motive, tradition also figured prominently, for example, in the controversy between proponents of the battleship and proponents of the aircraft ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... course until it came very chose to her. She had a sober mode of statement and criticism, which was never brilliant and never stupid. It ought to have been most serviceable to her husband, because it might have corrected the exaggeration into which his impulse, talent, and power of pictorial representation were so apt to fall. She had been brought up as an Evangelical, but she had passed through no religious experiences whatever, and religion, in the sense in which Evangelicalism ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... fate that led to the prompt capitulation of some two hundred survivors to a British charge. The remainder of the thousand men was practically all casualties from shell-bursts, which, granting some exaggeration in a prisoner's tale, illustrates what killing the guns may wreak if the target ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... admire them is probably akin to the feeling that has at all times rendered a white elephant an object of wonder to Asiatics. The rarity of the latter is accounted for by regarding this peculiar appearance as the result of albinism; and notwithstanding the exaggeration of Oriental historians, who compare the fairness of such creatures to the whiteness of snow, even in its utmost perfection, I apprehend that the tint of a white elephant is little else than a flesh-colour, rendered somewhat more conspicuous ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be clearly proved, because perhaps after all it may be only a providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture. Well, this is precisely what I had said, which the writer, who has given occasion to this Volume, considered so irrational. I had said, as he quotes me, "In this day, and under our present circumstances, we can only ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... pull it up. In the following theoretical case, the resistance would be as the cube of the depth; but in sand or shingle, the increase is less rapid. It varies under different circumstances; but it is no exaggeration to estimate its increase as seldom less than as the square of the depth. The theoretical case of which I spoke, is this:—Let x be part of a layer of shingle of wide extent: the shingle is supposed to consist of smooth hard spherical ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... usual with girls of fourteen. She first drew our attention to the view by one of her strong, eloquent bursts of eulogium; and Lucy met the remark with a truthful, simple answer, that showed abundant sympathy with the sentiment, though with less of exaggeration of manner and feeling, perhaps. I seized the moment as favourable for my ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Is this poetic exaggeration? Surely not: Victor Hugo spoke truly. Algebra, the poem of order, has magnificent flights. I look upon its formulae, its strophes as superb, without feeling at all astonished when others do not agree. My colleague's satirical look ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess, noticing Kitty's devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of consolation. All this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... generally exalted either for thinking or not thinking; and as I am not aware of any medium between the active and passive state of our minds (except dreaming, which is still more unpardonable), the reader may suppose that there is no exaggeration in my previous calculation of one-third of my midshipman existence having been passed away upon "the high and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "go"—it would be "little go" were they Cantabs—as the two undergraduates, young enough to be still up at College completing their education, yet old enough to propose and be accepted as eligible husbands. But in a rattling three-act farce as this is intended to be, any exaggeration is sufficiently probable as long only as it is thoroughly amusing; and, it be added, in such a piece, sentiment is as much out of place as would be plain matter-of-fact conduct or dialogue. To see Mr. PENLEY in the elderly Aunt's dress is to convulse the house ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... to sow, on properly prepared ground, the great essential in lawn-making is a proper kind of roller to use as occasion requires. Few people realize just how important a part a roller plays in the upkeep of any grass area, but it is no exaggeration to say that without one, successful results will be difficult if not impossible of achievement. Use a roller—a heavy roller—on your lawn early in the spring to repair the damage that the freezing and thawing has caused in ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... Loll's face quivered in his anxiety to convince her of the truth of his statements. Knowing the youngster's unconscious tendency toward exaggeration, she was doubtful. There could be no animal on the Island. But . . . to make sure . . . she herself would go ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... expression, or least of all, what we call understanding. The child distorts inevitably and dynamically. But the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. If a huge eye sits in the middle of the cheek, in a child's drawing, this shows that the deep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is the life-truth, even if it ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... the statement is misleading. Russian literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars—with few exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff—was unquestionably a vehicle for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to know, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... in prison; and when he contrasted his peaceful, pure, and Christian course those forty years of poverty, with his blasphemous and infidel career for the one bad week of wealth, he had no patience with himself—only felt his fall the greater; and his judgment of his own guilt, with a natural exaggeration, went the length of saying—I am scarcely less guilty before God and man, than if, indeed, my hands were red with murder, and my casual finding had been robbery. He would make no strong appeals to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... practice of using what is merely the history of human life as authority for human action now, or as prophecy, has produced or strengthened great evils in the world I readily admit, and I welcome all the thorough and searching criticism which can be applied to the Bible, but nothing is gained by exaggeration. There are noble examples of woman in the Old Testament of the heroic type, as in the New Testament of the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the process, but the old fellow went at it with his tools and his nails, till he made us all as neat and as flat as a schoolroom bench. And see the results of his workmanship! A few rebels, like Herscher, who, from hatred of the conventional, go for exaggeration and ugliness, or like myself, who, thanks to that old ass, love roughness and contortion so much, that my sculpture, they say, is "like a bag of walnuts." And the rest of ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tannhauser, Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy. Very naive and very archaic indeed are Hans Sachs's dramas compared with Wagner's; but it is, perhaps, not an exaggeration to say that Sachs was as influential a factor in the dramatic life of his time as Wagner in ours. He was among the earliest of the German poets who took up the miracle plays and mysteries after they had been abandoned by the church and developed them on the lines ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... princes of Florence, Urbino, Ferrara, and other independent cities vied with Rome, Venice, and Naples in sumptuousness of ornament, and lavishness of expense, until the inevitable period of decline supervened in which exaggeration of ornament and prodigality of decoration gave the eye ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... with the last army of the Republic, turning sharply right and left, beat the Austrians, destroyed Suvaroff in the mountains of Switzerland about Zurich. Before the excitement had subsided, came a despatch from the depths of the Mediterranean, penned with Ossianic exaggeration by the greatest of political romanticists, in which was announced the destruction of a turbaned army of Turks at Aboukir by the irresistible demi-brigades of the old army of Italy. And then, suddenly, people ran out into the streets to be told that the man himself was in France; ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Cyril, the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood. Even at present, there is scarcely a Roman Catholic cathedral which does not display some pretended pieces of this relic; and it has been computed, with some exaggeration, that were they all collected together, they might prove sufficient for building a ship of the line. To account for this extraordinary diffusion of so limited a quantity, the Catholic writers have been obliged to assert its preternatural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... them a vast array of really beautiful gems, which were tempting but high-priced. To say that, on an average, three of these men knocked at our door during the morning bath, while as many were waiting for us at the luncheon hour, literally camping out on the balcony during the evening hours, is no exaggeration. Then the cards they presented, the insinuations they indulged in with regard to the other man's goods (who was waiting outside)! It really was amusing, but it grew tiresome, and was demoralizing, because one was compelled to "bargain" if anything ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... exaggeration that high functionary after high functionary in the legislative or executive branches of the Government, and magnate after magnate had committed not only one violation, but constant violations, of the criminal law. They were unmolested; having ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... showers of stars which have been recorded, must be therefore considered as an accidental exaggeration of a perennial phenomenon, attaining its maximum when the earth passes through the central plane of the vortex, whose ascending node in 1833 we will suppose was in longitude 50d. This theory will therefore account for those ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... might almost gather therefrom how the first blackamoors came about. [Footnote: Micraelius also, in his "Ancient Pomerania" (vol. Ixxi. 2), mentions this circumstance, but only says:—"Those who came over to Stralsund were quite black from the hunger they had suffered." This accounts for the strange exaggeration of mine host, and the still stranger conclusion of our author.] But be that as it may. Summa. When Master Sehms had told us all the news he had heard, and we had thus learnt to our great comfort that the Lord had not visited us only in these times of heavy need, I called him ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... endeavoured to unite these opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished;—the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force; and by the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... with so much diligence that in 6 days eight or ten men did (in spite of difficulties which hindered them that we could go in that place but by canoes because of the rapidity & want of water that they had in the river) what others would have had trouble in doing in 6 months, without any exaggeration. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... of this information is to be found by taking it in conjunction with the recent puzzling reports of movements of the German High Seas Fleet. It will be remembered that the Fleet was represented in an enemy official report (with the customary exaggeration) as sweeping out into the North Sea. That was not readily believed, but it was generally felt that there must be something in it, especially as all manner of rumours of naval activity kept coming through from Scandinavia about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... yet she offered no assistance, until her mistress bade her attend to my toilet; then she obeyed, searching my face all the while from under her black eyelashes. Yet her singularity was probably an exaggeration of my own fancy, for she seems quiet and well-behaved, though a little sullen. I am glad she is not to be my attendant, for there is certainly an evil look in her eyes, whenever she regards me, and I could never ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the image of her own management of her children reflected without exaggeration or distortion in this glass; and, as the former story shows how the freest indulgence is compatible with the maintenance of the most absolute authority, this enables us to see how a perpetual resistance to the impulses and desires of children may ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... (ii. 503) considers three thousand dinars (the figure in the Bres. Edit.) "a more probable sum." Possibly: but, I repeat, exaggeration is one of the many characteristics ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden furor which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... as medicine is concerned, I am not sure that physiology, such as it was down to the time of Harvey, might as well not have existed. Nay, it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that, within the memory of living men, justly renowned practitioners of medicine and surgery knew less physiology than is now to be learned from the most elementary text-book; and, beyond a few broad facts, regarded what they ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... our own facetious narratives about the wise men of Gotham, the old woman whose petticoats were cut short by the pedlar whose name was Stout, and a number of other inhabitants of Fool-land, to whom the heart of childhood is still closely attached, and also of the exaggeration-stories, the German Luegenmaehrchen, on which was founded the narrative of Baron Munchausen's surprising adventures. But instead of doing this, before passing on to the more important groups of the Skazkas, I will quote, as this chapter's final illustrations of the Russian story-teller's ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... raged without either party obtaining a decisive advantage. Notwithstanding his inferiority in numbers Ieyasu was completely victorious. The carnage was dreadful. The number of the confederate army said to have been killed was 40,000.(195) This seems like an impossible exaggeration, and the Japanese annalists are, like those of other nations, given to heightened statements. But that the loss of life on both sides was very great there ...
— Japan • David Murray
... that his views were diabolical; but, especially since that warning which I had from his wife, I discount everything that he says. He begins in earnest; but as he goes on the humour of exaggeration gets hold of him, and he winds up with things which he would never uphold in cold blood. However, the fact remains that we differ widely in our views of professional life, and I fear that we may come ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... colony feared that the market for this established staple of the American trade might be ruined. He brought with him also ore which he hoped an assay would prove to be gold, and he declared the country to be rich in copper. With some exaggeration, he announced explorations "into the country near two hundred miles" and the discovery of "a river navigable for great shippes one hundred and fifty miles." The adventurers responded by sending him out again, in October 1607, with 120 prospective settlers and ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... literature is made up of books which could have been better written by men—books which have the same relation to literature is general, as academic prize poems have to poetry: when not a feeble imitation, they are usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire. Few English women have written so much like a woman as Richardson's Lady G. Now we think it an immense mistake to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its incipient torpor; and the reaction against it—indifference and unbelief—failed not soon to appear. Even in the first Punic war (505) an instance ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... more of them family portraits," said Mr Roe with a wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of grammar—"than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... THE INTEREST IN SCIENCE. A very prominent feature of world educational development, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the general introduction into the schools of the study of science. It is no exaggeration of the importance of this to say that no addition of new subject-matter and no change in the direction and purpose of education, since that time, has been of greater importance for the welfare of mankind, or more significant of new world conditions, than has been ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... interest, the honor, the independence of the United States, and the faith of our engagements to France. If we listen to the clamor of party intemperance, the evils are of a number not to be counted, and of a nature not to be borne, even in idea. The language of passion and exaggeration may silence that of sober reason in other places, it has not done it here. The question here is, whether the treaty be really so very fatal as to oblige the nation to break its faith. I admit that such a treaty ought not to be executed. I admit ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... already said, his distinguishing excellence is vivid and natural description of the life and habits, not the opinions, of the people of the fourteenth century, described without exaggeration or effort for effect. He paints his age as Moliere paints the times of Louis XIV., and Homer the heroic periods of Grecian history. This fidelity to nature and inexhaustible humor and living freshness and perpetual ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... crack airman, who had worked for hours to do it, but the best machine we had at the 'drome where I learned flying would only do six thousand, and no one could get her up there under forty minutes. She was a fine machine, too, as machines went in those days. To-day it is no exaggeration to say that ten thousand feet above the earth is low to a flier. Everyone goes to twenty thousand continually, and many of the biggest fights take place from seventeen thousand to ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... looking at her with some curiosity during her speech, and quickly came to the conclusion that Kelson's description of her had certainly not erred on the side of exaggeration. She looked divinely handsome in her ball-dress of a darkish shade of blue, relieved by a bunch of roses in her corsage and a single diamond brooch. Statuesque, too statuesque, Kelson had called her; certainly her ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... September, 1863, we obtained possession, among other plunder, of quite a quantity of Confederate commissary stores. Among these was a copious supply of "jerked beef." It consisted of narrow, thin strips of beef, which had been dried on scaffolds in the sun, and it is no exaggeration to say that it was almost as hard and dry as a cottonwood chip. Our manner of eating it was simply to cut off a chunk about as big as one of our elongated musket balls, and proceed to "chaw." It was rather a comical sight to see us in our cabins of a cold winter night, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... himself. Deullin was there, too, one of Guynemer's oldest and most devoted friends. Last of all descended from the high regions sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz, a rather heavy man with a serious face, and more maturity than belonged to his years, an unassuming young man with a hatred for exaggeration and a ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... reason to regret being separated from her husband, whose harsh treatment finally occasioned her death. But Johnstone appears not to be altogether untinctured with the prejudices of his clan, and is probably, in this instance, guilty of exaggeration; as the active share, taken by the Marquis of Hamilton in favour of Maxwell, is a circumstance inconsistent ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... are so very extraordinary, that were they not notorious, I should hardly have ventured to mention them, for fear of being suspected of exaggeration; but they are perfectly known in the country, by every body; having been published by authority in the news-papers at the time, with all their various details and specifications, for the information ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... sixteen, he had passed his youth in alternate pleasure, travel, and solitary study. At the age in which manhood is least susceptible to caprice, and most perhaps to passion, he fell in love with the loveliest person that ever dawned upon a poet's vision. I say this without exaggeration, for Gertrude Vane's was indeed the beauty, but the perishable beauty, of a dream. It happened most singularly to Trevylyan (but he was a singular man), that being naturally one whose affections it was very difficult to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he said; "and our proverbs, though made by men, express this truth with a sharpness in which there is little exaggeration. Our school textbooks tell us that action and reaction are equal and opposite; and this familiar phrase gives meaning to the saw, Pelmave dakal dake, 'She is equal, the thing struck to the hammer,' meaning that ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Mrs Peagrim was not present and—a more disturbing discovery—that Otis Pilkington was. It would be exaggeration to say that Uncle Chris was embarrassed. That master-mind was never actually embarrassed. But his jauntiness certainly ebbed a little, and he had to pull his mustache twice before he could face the situation with his customary aplomb. He had not expected to find Otis Pilkington ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Van-ta-gin to consist of eighteen hundred thousand men, one million of which were said to be infantry, and eight hundred thousand cavalry. As this government, however, is supposed to be much given to exaggeration in all matters relating to the aggrandisement of the country, and to deal liberally in hyperboles, wherever numbers are concerned, the authenticity of the above statement of their military force may perhaps be called ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... carried on, by intervals and starts, it came to the ears of Richard that a nobleman of Limoges had found on his lands a considerable hidden treasure. The king, necessitous and rapacious to the last degree, and stimulated by the exaggeration and marvellous circumstances which always attend the report of such discoveries, immediately sent to demand the treasure, under pretence of the rights of seigniory. The Limosin, either because he had really discovered nothing or that he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
