"Overstatement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or rather forgotten, as an inferior dramatist. He was a good deal more, and the researches of M. Beclard into his life and works enable us to appreciate him. If it is an overstatement to say that his soul reflected in miniature the very soul of his age, [Footnote: L. Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, sa vie, son oeuvre, son temps (1903), p. vii.] he was assuredly one of its characteristic products. He reminds us in some ways of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, who was ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... overstatement for Claude's professional friend to say that Claude had outgrown his service. It was true only that by and by there had come a juncture in his affairs where he could not, without injustice to others, make a place for Claude which he could advise Claude to accept, and they had ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent." Whether or not this principle is liable to exceptions, everyone would agree that is has a broad measure of truth, though the word "exactly" might seem an overstatement, and it might seem more correct to say that ideas APPROXIMATELY represent impressions. Such modifications of Hume's principle, however, do not affect the problem which I wish to present for your consideration, namely: Why do we believe that images are, sometimes or always, approximately ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... ranking officer was a regular army colonel who had seen active and dangerous service in the Philippines and elsewhere. He is given rather to understatement than overstatement of facts—a cool, level-headed observer. He saw a periscope. We had another officer who had been in the service in the Spanish War, had got out and was now back. He was probably the best lookout of all the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... had so loved her father should so think and feel. And her self-control, her accurate fluency, answered with him for her sincerity as emotion could not have done. Passion would never carry this noble girl into overstatement. Fairness constrained him to admit, while he listened, that dark color in his cheek, that her view of her father was more likely to be right than her mother's view. An unhappily married woman was seldom fair. Mrs. Upton had never mentioned her husband to him, never alluded to him ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was launched in the Daily Chronicle, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment accorded to Ulster. "Up to this hour," the writer said, "the Irish Division asked for by Mr. Redmond has been refused sanction by the War Office." This was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time such a belief naturally prevailed, because the War Office could not be induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given. Moreover, although ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... social arrangements of his imaginary town—although the fact that his stories are set in a mid-American place like Winesburg does constitute an important formative condition. You might even say, with only slight overstatement, that what Anderson is doing in Winesburg, Ohio could be described as "antirealistic," fictions notable less for precise locale and social detail than for a highly personal, even strange vision of American life. Narrow, intense, almost claustrophobic, the result is a book about extreme states ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... the famous and historic chess-players, who could sit with their backs to a group of rivals playing fourteen men at once, calling out all the moves in turn, remembering all the positions of all the men on all the boards, and winning. This, of course, would be an overstatement of the subtlety of Cowperwood at this time, and yet it would not be wholly out of bounds. He knew instinctively what could be done with a given sum of money—how as cash it could be deposited in one place, and yet as credit and the basis of moving checks, used in not one ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... less seriously than they did; undoubtedly our attention is more distracted and dissipated. At any rate, the American public finds it easier to forgive and forget, than to nurse its wrath to keep it warm. Our characteristic humor of understatement, and our equally characteristic humor of overstatement, are both likely to be cheery at bottom, though the mere wording may be grim enough. No popular saying is more genuinely characteristic of American humor than the familiar "Cheer up. The worst is yet ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... been occupied in this exploration about three weeks, Lescarbot says a month, but this is an overstatement. By a careful examination of the text, it will appear that they departed from Port Mouton on the 19th of May, and that several days after their return, not less than nine, they were again in St. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... ceaselessly flowing. A book might be written on the one subject of the part that river navigation has played in developing the interior States of this Union. Another could well be devoted to the history of lake navigation, which it is no overstatement to pronounce the most impressive chapter in the history of the American merchant marine. In this volume, however, but brief attention can ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... a sense of good and evil. I would not have committed an indelicacy, even if certain of impunity. I would not have permitted myself the slightest overstatement. ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... have been presented by an impartial historian. It is the Transvaal from within, by one who feels all the injustice and indignity of the position. With the knowledge, however, that a good case is spoiled by overstatement and with the desire to avoid injustice to others an earnest attempt has been made to state the facts fairly. In how far that attempt has been successful the reader must decide ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... friction. His cousin, James Russell Lowell, once asked me regarding this, and my reply was that it reminded me of a character in the "Biglow Papers'' who "had a dre'dful winnin' way to make folks hate him.'' This was doubtless an overstatement, but it contained truth; for at times there was perhaps lacking in his handling of delicate questions something of the suaviter in modo. His honest frankness was worthy of all praise; but I once found it necessary to write him: "I am sorry that you have ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... This was an overstatement. He was comparatively free of work, press day having only just gone by; but he was keenly anxious to avoid conversation on the subject of cats, of his ignorance of which Mr. Jarvis's appearance had suddenly reminded him. He took up an old proof sheet ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... damages is grounded when a plaintiff makes an overstatement of his claim in the writ of summons, in consequence of which the officers of the court take too large a fee from the defendant. In such a case the latter will be able to recover from the plaintiff three times the loss which he sustains by the overcharge, including in these ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... heads, in the one case as against the other. Therefore any attempt to speak with sufficient definition, so as to bring out this national difference of animus in any convincing way, will unavoidably have an appearance of overstatement, if not also of bias. And in any case, of course, it is not to be expected that the national difference here spoken for can be brought home to the apprehension of any unspoiled son of the Fatherland, since it does not ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of a clergyman in The Private Secretary. But the controversy is definitely worth recording, if only as an excellent example of the author's aggressive attitude and his love of turning the tables in debate. Moreover, though this point of view involves a potential overstatement, it also involves an important truth. One of the best points urged in the course of it was this, that though vice is punished in conventional drama, the punishment is not really impressive, because it is not inevitable or even probable. It does not arise out of the evil act. Years ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... those dramatic moments for which my friend existed. It would be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even excited by the amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of cruelty in his singular composition, he was undoubtedly callous from long overstimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled, his intellectual perceptions ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sure, the adroit way in which she contrived so often to find herself alone with me, both in the house and out of it, even to the point of sometimes placing me in a quasi-false position. That she tempted me is, perhaps, an overstatement, though that she availed herself of every legitimate use of feminine magic to entrap me is certainly the truth. Opportunities of marriage, it was notorious, had been frequently given to her, and she had as frequently declined them; she was older than her years; to ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood |
