To exaggerate is to weaken. ~Jean Fran?ois de La Harpe; Melanie; 1770


We aim above the mark; to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are. ~Honore de Balzac


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


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 Sibert Cather


All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration; caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable. ~Walt Disney


All news is an exaggeration of life. ~Daniel Schorr


All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate. ~Nicolas Chamfort


An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. ~Kahlil Gibran


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


Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable. ~Hosea Ballou


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


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


Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive. ~Eliza Cook


Exaggeration; the inseparable companion of greatness. ~Voltaire


False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis. ~William Alger


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


If you add to the truth; you subtract from it. ~The Talmud


It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead. ~Mark Twain


Man is inclined to exaggerate almost everything - except his own mistakes. ~Author Unknown


Never exaggerate your faults; your friends will attend to that. ~Bob Edwards


Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught. ~Author Unknown


Some folks never exaggerate - they just remember big. ~Attributed to both Audrey Snead and Chi Chi Rodriguez


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


There are people so addicted to exaggeration they can't tell the truth without lying. ~Josh Billings


There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation; men are encumbered with personality; and talk too much. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


There's no disappointment in memory; and one's exaggerations are always on the good side. ~George Eliot


'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


To a small man every greater is an exaggeration. ~Henry David Thoreau