Quotations about Exaggeration
Exaggeration is merely a flight of poetic fancy. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915
Oh, you take me literally; and if you always do that you will certainly find that I don't square with fact. ~Rosa Murray-Prior Praed (1851–1935), Christina Chard, 1894
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they actually can't tell the truth without lying. ~Henry Wheeler Shaw (1818–1885), quoted in H. Montague, Wit and Wisdom of Josh Billings, 1913
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood, and nearly as blamable. ~Hosea Ballou (1771–1852), quoted in Day's Collacon, 1884
Et cetera, et cetera! The theme is inexhaustible. I have dealt with it here one-sidedly, from but one of its aspects, exaggerating it. But to think to speak, is always to exaggerate. By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration. ~José Ortega y Gasset, "In Search of Goethe from Within," 1949
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate. ~Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort
The child trained in exaggeration generally graduates into an adult liar. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1904, George Horace Lorimer, editor
It is impossible to exaggerate trifles without belittling great things. ~Charles Searle, Look Here!, 1885
Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives, that we need to make a large discount from their statements, before we can come at their real meaning. ~Tryon Edwards, The World's Laconics, 1853
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. ~Willa Cather
Sometimes in life we blow things out of proportion because proportion is so dull. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
'T is a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is there something so delicious in disasters and pain? Bad news is always exaggerated, and we may challenge Providence to send a fact so tragical that we cannot contrive to make it a little worse in our gossip...
We are unskilful definers. From want of skill to convey quality, we hope to move admiration by quantity. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Superlative," 1882
There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary & virtuous function. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves...? We live by exaggeration. What else is it to anticipate more than we enjoy? The lightning is an exaggeration of the light. Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. To a small man every greater is an exaggeration. ~Henry David Thoreau
It is very likely that Solomon was rich and learned for his time and people. Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness, attributes riches to him which he could not have possessed, and books which he could not have written. Respect for antiquity has since consecrated these errors. ~Voltaire, translated by William F. Fleming
How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation. ~Samuel Johnson