A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
It is very discouraging to find, when you are straining every nerve to tell the truth, that people do not believe you, and fancy that you are exaggerating. It makes you feel inclined to go and exaggerate on purpose, just to show them the difference. I know I often feel tempted to do so myself--it is my early training that saves me.
~ Clocks
We should always be very careful never to give way to exaggeration; it is a habit that grows upon one.
~ Clocks
In the old times, when poets and dry-goods salesmen were the only people who exaggerated, there was something clever and _distingue_ about a reputation for "a tendency to over, rather than to under-estimate the mere bald facts." But everybody exaggerates nowadays. The art of exaggeration is no longer regarded as an "extra" in the modern bill of education; it is an essential requirement, held to be most needful for the battle of life.
~ Clocks
As schoolboys, we exaggerate our fights and our marks and our fathers' debts. As men, we exaggerate our wares, we exaggerate our feelings, we exaggerate our incomes--except to the tax-collector, and to him we exaggerate our "outgoings"; we exaggerate our virtues; we even exaggerate our vices, and, being in reality the mildest of men, pretend we are dare-devil scamps.
~ Clocks
When he had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.
~ Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)