Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Exaggeration

If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.
The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years. The image is never marred. There’s no disappointment in memory, and one’s exaggerations are always on the good side.
George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist

It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.
Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author

Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer

He’s the type who makes mountains out of molehills and then sells climbing equipment.
Ivern Ball (1926–92) American Writer, Aphorist

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will is a shapeless world.
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist

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.
Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher

Exaggeration is to paint a snake and add legs.
Common Proverb

What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.
French Proverb

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 (1809–94) American Theologian, Author

Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.
Eliza Cook (1818–89) English Author, Poet

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 (1803–82) American Philosopher

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
Walt Disney (1901–66) American Entrepreneur

There is a pedantry in manners, as in all arts and sciences, and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the over rating any kind of knowledge we pretend to, and if that kind of knowledge be a trifle in itself, the pedantry is the greater.
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist

Man is inclined to exaggerate almost everything – except his own mistakes.
Unknown

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 (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer

We overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination… down our earth to rake … .
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet

‘Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet

Some persons are exaggerators by temperament.—They do not mean untruth, but their feelings are strong, and their imaginations vivid, so that their statements are largely discounted by those of calm judgment and cooler temperament.—They do not realize that “we always weaken what we exaggerate.”
Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author

We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood or exaggeration in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

There is a sort of harmless liars, frequently to be met with in company, who deal much in the marvellous. Their usual intention is to please and entertain: but as men are most delighted with what they conceive to be truth, these people mistake the means of pleasing, and incur universal blame.
David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood, and nearly as blameable.
Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Theologian

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style—but a particular kind of style. It is love of the exaggerated.
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright

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