"Overstate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resources and growth of America have developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. It seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. The positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... them fatten their offspring as best they could and sell them dead or alive for cooking. The irony of the proposition may sound appalling to us in this century, but Swift was not exaggerating the distress of his day. Even Primate Boulter, who was certainly the last man to overstate an Irish case, sent such reports as gave the English Government anxiety. To Swift it was no time for polite speeches and calm proposals. He had already given them in abundance. Now was the time for something ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... you have done in these savage places of the world, you can hardly fail to be aware of what is known even in England: that this fellow Blood strictly confines himself to making war upon the Spaniards. So that to call him thief and pirate as you did was to overstate the case against him at a time when it would have been more prudent ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... when running full force, employment to about 400 men, and turns out a car-load of wire each hour for ten hours per day, on an average, though this amount is considerably increased at certain times of the year. These figures, though not given us by Mr. Ellwood, we are satisfied do not overstate the production of this one factory. The progress of the barb-wire industry of the whole country is shown by the following record of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... difficult to properly estimate, from the number of rooms in a cliff house, the former population, and as a general thing the tendency is rather to overstate than to fall short of the true total. In a pueblo like Hano, on the first or east mesa of Tusayan, for instance, there are many uninhabited rooms, and others serve as storage chambers, while in places the pueblo ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... undertook to doubt his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in the air. Cooper could not well overstate the material prosperity and progress of the country, nor the inability of men trained under different conditions either to believe it or to comprehend it. Reality soon outran some of his most daring anticipations. His most extravagant statements were speedily more than confirmed by the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... against the Queen's," he made reply. And as now they rode amain she fell to thanking him, shyly at first, then, as she gathered confidence in her subject, with a greater fervour. But he interrupted her ere she had gone far, "Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye," said he, "you overstate the matter." His tone was chilling almost; and she felt as she had been rebuked. "I am no more than the emissary of Her Majesty—it is to her that your ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the Court suggests no reply, and upon them it offers no criticism. On the contrary, it in terms concedes "the strength of this appeal to recognized and widely prevalent sentiment." It declares that "no word of praise could overstate the industry and Intelligence of the Commission" which prepared the New York law, and it apparently agrees with the conclusion of the Commission, based on "a most voluminous array of statistical tables, extracts from the works ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... fair Marion, or Wat Webster's pith of anecdote, that produced the congregation of individuals round his "blazing ingle," at the approach of the eerie hour of twelve, when it was probable the mysterious stranger would again appear. Be all this as it may—and we have no wish to overstate a case in which it is scarcely possible to carry language too far—there cannot be a doubt that the bells of the Franciscan monastery, as they tolled, in reverberating sounds, the termination of the old year and the beginning of the new, on that eventful night, struck a panic into ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... People duly impressed with this truth are sometimes laughed at for their superstitious tone, which is pronounced, according to the fancy of the critic, mawkish, maudlin or hysterical. But it is really difficult to see how any reiteration of the importance of art can overstate the plain facts. It prolongs, it preserves, it consecrates, it raises from the dead. It conciliates, charms, bribes posterity; and it murmurs to mortals, as the old French poet sang to his mistress, "You will be fair only so far as I have ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James |
