Man is inclined to exaggerate almost everything – except his own mistakes.
—Unknown
There are people so addicted to exaggeration they can’t tell the truth without lying.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
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
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
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
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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
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
All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
—Walt Disney (1901–66) American Entrepreneur
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
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
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
An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-American Philosopher, Poet, Sculptor
Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.
—Eliza Cook (1818–89) English Author, 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
Exaggeration is to paint a snake and add legs.
—Common Proverb
It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive. Why should it exaggerate? There is that which should be destroyed and that which should be simply illuminated and studied. How great is the force of benevolent and searching examination! We must not resort to the flame where only light is required.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood, and nearly as blameable.
—Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Theologian
We overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination… down our earth to rake … .
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
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 (1709–84) British Essayist
Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
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
If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
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
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