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.
He's the type who makes mountains out of molehills and then sells climbing equipment.
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
I don't want to tell you how much insurance I carry with the Prudential, but all I can say is: when I go, they go too.
There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
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.
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.
There is no one who does not exaggerate!
'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
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.
We always weaken everything we exaggerate.
— La Harpe
Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
I never exaggerate. I just remember big.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is love of the exaggerated.
Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
Imagine being in a room with two TV sets. One is a large screen TV with surround sound. The other is a miniature 1 screen TV. What would you tend to focus on and become absorbed in? Some people make their problems the size of the large screen TV and their personal goals the size of the miniature one. It is important to mentally minimize the problems and the cant's and maximize the goals and the cans.
Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
— Voltaire