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More "Hyperbole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and enriched if, after facing the perils of navigation in strange waters, the possible hostility of native rulers, and the still greater danger from European rivals, half his ships returned. The last statement is no hyperbole; of 9 ships sent to the East from Amsterdam in 1598, four came back, and just half of the 22 sent out from ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... speechless eloquence in such a scene. The figure of a quiet slumber is no hyperbole, but a sober verity. As the gentle smile of a foretasted heaven is seen playing on the marble lips—the rays gilding the mountain tops after the golden sun has gone down—what more befitting reflection than this, "So giveth He His ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... not then this hyperbole seem too much for an eastern poet, though some commentators of name strain hard in this place for a new construction, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... than few stands the author of "The Revenger's Tragedy." The great scene of the temptation and the triumph of Castiza would alone be enough to give evidence, not adequate merely but ample, that such praise as this is no hyperbole of sympathetic enthusiasm, but simply the accurate expression of an indisputable fact. No lyrist, no satirist, could have excelled in fiery flow of rhetoric the copious and impetuous eloquence of the lines, at once ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... conferred upon that loyal Moslem Kheyred-Din Barbarossa, who, in the words of the Padishah, "abandoning a sterile independence, sought in all the bloody hazards of his life nought but the glory of God and His Prophet" To us this hyperbole, addressed to a pirate, seems merely ridiculous, but in those days of fanaticism the beliefs of men, both Christians and Moslems, are something which it is impossible for us to realise. On either side the way of salvation was the path of conquest, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... punitive force. In 1690 he was at Montreal, lending his aid in the defence of that part of the colony against raiding bands of Iroquois which were once again proving a menace. At Boucherville, in 1694, one historian tells us with characteristic hyperbole, Durantaye killed ten Iroquois with his own hand. Mohawks were not, as a rule, so easy to catch or kill. Two years later he commanded a detachment of troops and militiamen in operations against his ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department; so that few nations exist, or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon. Of the classics, I know about as much as most school-boys ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... affirmed that the housework to be done at The Shrubbery was nothing, she was guilty of hyperbole. All the same, the house was an easy one, and such labour as its upkeep entailed melted, beneath the perfectly organized attention of herself, Anne, and Lyveden, as snow beneath the midday sun. The three had more ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... her debts," said Toombs on one occasion. "If she does not, I will pay them for her!" This piece of hyperbole was softened by the fact that on two occasions, when the State needed money to supply deficits, Toombs with other Georgians did come forward and lift the pressure. Sometimes he talked in a random way, but responsibility always ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then He quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher principle of conduct. To a man who is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should be regarded as a permanent settlement. In 1852, the Democrats, assembled in national conventions at Baltimore, indorsed them in their platform. So did the Whigs; and Rufus Choate, their convention orator, was excusable for his hyperbole when he described "with what instantaneous and mighty charm they calmed the madness and anxiety of ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... Oriental that you will find the most of what extravagance there is in English literature. In America you find extravagance in our humor, and this humor, perhaps, owes as much of its extravagance to an Irish ancestry as to an environment of new wonders that could not be well expressed save in hyperbole. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... last followed Ritter in taking trecenos as loosely put for 365, a steer for each day in the year. The hyperbole, as he says, would otherwise be too extravagant. And ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... with intense conviction and hyperbole, more excusable than his old prudence and fickleness, "Anything! Mad, you could do everything with me, and with little Bill and Bob. We should no longer be egotistical and frivolous, with you to keep us right, you good, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... he repeats. "You use strong language, Inez. But then you have an excitable sort of nature, and were ever inclined to hyperbole; and it is ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of Tobias, 4, 11, ought to be received: Alms free from every sin and from death. We will not say that this is hyperbole, although it ought thus to be received, so as not to detract from the praise of Christ, whose prerogative it is to free from sin and death. But we must come back to the rule that without Christ the doctrine of the Law is ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... penning-up. I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that, not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and literally, Andriaovsky was everything he did, my ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... intolerance for every form of democracy. Poor white people have not the slightest chance of his good opinion. The pedigree and history of his master's family possess an epic dignity in his imagination; and the liberty he takes with facts concerning them amounts to a grand poetical hyperbole. He represents their wealth in past times to have amounted to something of a fabulous superfluity, and their magnificence so unbounded, that he stares at you in describing it, as if its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... antiquarians attach much importance, as showing the ideas then prevalent in reference to geography, and the point at which the art of ship-building had then arrived. Of course due allowance must be made for Homer's tendency to indulge in hyperbole. ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... Prussia. And every lady expects attention and politeness as a matter of course, equally as a matter of course did she expect the assiduities and some manifestation, even stronger than gallantry, and treated it merely as a matter of course. Really, without an hyperbole, she was a woman to whom an appearance of devotion might be excusable, and looked upon more as a tribute to the abstract spirit of beauty and its divine Creator, than as a sensual ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Obedience is better than sacrifice, or Hosea by The Knowledge of God is more than burnt-offerings.(299) Nor are there grounds for thinking that the Prophet had in view only the Ten Commandments; while finally to claim that he spoke in hyperbole is a forlorn hope of an argument. In answer to all these evasions it is enough to point out that the question is not merely that of the value of sacrifice, but whether during the Exodus the God of Israel gave ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... which the Writer had turned from the genuine affections and their self-forgetting inspirations, to the end that his understanding, or the faculty designated by the word head as opposed to heart, might curiously construct a fabric to be wondered at. Hyperbole in the language of Montrose is a mean instrument made mighty because wielded by an afflicted soul, and strangeness is here the order of Nature. Montrose stretched after remote things, but was at the same time propelled towards them; the French Writer goes deliberately in search of them: ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in his last illness, he asked Lockhart one day to read to him. "From what book shall I read?" said Lockhart. "There is but one book," was Scott's answer. Those who have sought the "power to become the sons of God" will understand this hyperbole of the most healthy human mind in modern English literature. Tested by experience there is indeed, in the wide range of the literature of power, no book to be mentioned with the Bible for feeding the life of God in man. Our fathers found this true, and ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... shaped. Something was required to divert public attention, to employ the idle, to popularise your Highness's rule, and, if it were possible, to enable him to reduce the taxes at a blow, and to a notable amount. The proposed expedition—for it cannot without hyperbole be called a war—seemed to the council to combine the various characters required; a marked improvement in the public sentiment has followed even upon our preparations; and I cannot doubt that when success shall follow, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imagine I have dealt in hyperbole, or hand-illumined the facts: I have merely stated some simple truths about the early ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... prospect of censure or disgrace. He knew the character of the English people—rash, impatient, and capricious; elevated to exultation by the least gleam of success, dejected even to despondency by the most inconsiderable frown of adverse fortune; sanguine, even to childish hyperbole, in applauding those servants of the public who have prospered in their undertakings; clamorous, to a degree of prosecution, against those who have miscarried in their endeavours, without any investigation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... warriors slaughtered in the great swamp fight could not be replaced; but, as Roger Williams told the Indians, there were still ten thousand white men who could carry muskets, and should all these be slain, he added, with a touch of hyperbole, the Great Father in England could send ten thousand more. For the moment Williams seems to have cherished a hope that his great influence with the savages might induce them to submit to terms of peace while there was yet a remnant to be saved; but they were now as little ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... turned a flock of Dorset ewes into one of these orchards, the buyer complained—the lower branches being heavily laden, and within a few feet of the ground—that he had watched, "Them old yows holding down bunches of plums with their harns for t'others to eat." This I imagine was in the nature of hyperbole, and not intended to be ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... game for mighty likely it's three hours, an' no one gets a verbal rise outen him more'n if he's a graven image. Vance is gettin' proud of himse'f, an' Jenkins, who comes prowlin' 'round the game at times, begins to reckon mebby Vance'll do. All goes well ontil a party lets fly some hyperbole about a tavern he strikes in Little Rock, which for size an' extensif characteristics lays over anythin' on earth like a ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... address:—"GENTLEMEN, You are met here on the greatest occasion that, I believe, England ever saw; having upon your shoulders the interests of three great nations, with the territories belonging to them: and truly I believe I may say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders the interest of all the Christian people in the world. And the expectation is, that I should let you know, as far as I have cognisance of it, the occasion of your assembling together ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 'This wonder that has filled me hath arisen from an ordinance that looks like a hyperbole, and from its paradoxical statement for the comprehension of the people. The declaration of the Vedas seems to be untrue. But why should the Vedas say an untruth? It has been said that there are three tracks which constitute the best vows of a man ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... XIV. suggests ultra-lavishness in life and taste; a time when French society, surfeited with pleasure, demanded a stimulus of continual novelty in current literature. The natural result was preciosite, hyperbole, falsetto sentiment, which ranked the unusual above the natural, clever conceit above careful workmanship. It was tainted with artificiality, and now seems ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... men, as did Homer; but he is also compared to Ariosto, because of his wealth of imagery. His heroes are very different from those to whom we have been wont to pay our allegiance; but they fight for the same principles and worship as lovely maids, to judge from the hyperbole employed in their description. The condensation of the Shah-Nameh reads like a dry chronicle; but in its entirety it reminds one of nothing so much as a gorgeous Persian web, so light and varied, so brightened is it ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... its "chief" delights—and then the pre-eminent beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence, the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more passionate ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... by Lady Morgan. In the body of the volume, there is not one new nor curious article, unless it be Lady Hood's "Tiger Hunt." In your Mechanics there is a miserable want of information, and in your Statistics there is a sad superabundance of American hyperbole and dulness mixed together, like the mud and gunpowder which, when a boy, I used to mix together to make a fizz. Your Poetry is so bad that I look upon it as your personal kindness to me that you did not put my lines under that ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of course, was for a time impossible. Martyrdom was followed by canonization, and the popular heart could not be blamed for overflowing in hyperbole. The fallen chief "was Washington, he was Moses, and there were not wanting even those who likened him to the God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latter thought they discovered in his early origin, his kindly nature, his benevolent precepts, and the homely anecdotes ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... friends of the prodigious sacrifice she was about to make for her brother and his family, as if it had been the cutting off of a hand or the plucking out of an eye. To have heard her, anyone unaccustomed to the hyperbole of fashionable language would have deemed Botany Bay the nearest possible point of destination. Parting from her fashionable acquaintances was tearing herself from all she loved; quitting London was bidding adieu to the world. Of course there could be no society where ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... a something that begins in sensation and ends in sentiment. Thanks to beautiful and permissible hyperbole, you have begun with sensation in your description of love, and have ended with sentiment. You have told me about love, in terms of love, which is a vain performance and unscientific. Now let me make you a definition. Love is a disorder of ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... of vivid hyperbole being exhausted, Mrs. Lester and I expressed ourselves simply to the same effect. We turned, heedful no longer of the tides, and travelled delightfully along the Artichoke road until we reached a ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... their native tongues, poets honouring with despairing emulation, the whole mind of educated man feeling the transcendent power of the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey. Surely, the boasted triumph of poetry over space and time is no daring hyperbole—surely, it is little more than the boasted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... arise. Such a one we believe was Jesus of Nazareth, the most exalted religious genius whom God ever sent upon the earth; in himself an embodied revelation; humanity in its divinest phase, 'God manifest in the flesh,' according to eastern hyperbole; an exemplar given in an early age of the world to show what man may and should become in the course of ages; in his progress towards the realization of his destiny; an individual gifted with a grand, clear ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... tapering pine! Well, we had the satisfaction for a time of claiming the tallest structure in the world; and now that the new Tower of Babel which has sprung up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and speak more modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materialization of the American love of the superlative. We have the higher civilization among us, and we must try to keep down the forth-putting instincts of the lower. We do not want to see our national monument placarded as "the greatest show ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... whenever he put my king in check, I would relieve him with my queen; till he had exhausted all the coin in the purse of his resolution, and expended all the arrows of the quiver of his argument. "Take heed and retreat not from the orator's attack, for nothing is left him but metaphor and hyperbole. Wield thy polemics and law citations, for the wordy rhetorician made a show of arms over his gate, but has not a soldier within his fort":—At length, having no syllogism left, I made him crouch in mental submission. He stretched forth the arm of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... I want most awfully to do Bismarck. He looks SO splendid this morning, so FIERCE. He's almost as big as a lion.' And the child chuckled sardonically at her own hyperbole. 'He's a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... civilization of each. Moorish influence was predominant in Spain—Portugal retained more deeply the Roman stamp. This is easily seen in the literature of the two countries. Spanish ballads and plays show the Eastern delight in hyperbole, the Eastern fertility of invention: Portuguese literature is completely classic in spirit, avoiding all exaggeration, all offences against taste, and confining itself to classic forms, such as the pastoral, the epic and the sonnet. Many Moorish customs survive in Portugal to this day, but they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... "Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... wisest and the most loving of all human beings; and have attributed such language as that in the text, which—translate it as you will—ascribes absolute divinity, and nothing less, to our Lord Jesus Christ—they have attributed it, I say, to some fondness for Oriental hyperbole, and mystic Theosophy, in the minds of the Apostles. Others, again, have gone further, and been, I think, more logically honest. They have perceived that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as His words are reported, attributed divinity to Himself, just as much as did His ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... enemies!" Mark you not simply those who do not happen to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, in so far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... best pictures of the ancienne noblesse in literature, one which—to reverse the contrast just made—annihilates Dickens's caricature thereof in A Tale of Two Cities. The single-handed defence of La Tourgue by "L'Imanus" has of course a good deal of the hyperbole which began with Quasimodo's similar act in Notre-Dame; but the reader who cannot "let himself go" with it is to be pitied. Nowhere is Hugo's child-worship more agreeably shown than in the three first chapters of the third volume. And, sinking particulars ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... deliberately and advisedly to be characterised by no adequate word but the word magnificent (a word too often and lightly abused). In reality, speaking of women, I have seen many beautiful figures, but hardly one except Agnes that could without hyperbole be styled truly and memorably magnificent. Though in the first order of tall women, yet, being full in person, and with a symmetry that was absolutely faultless, she seemed to the random sight as little ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... that I considered it an epoch in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall of Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed I think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has been applied—'See Rome and die:' but in your case I would propose an emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for pre-eminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist his ...
— Options • O. Henry
... though the Muses have beene dead and gone I know they'll finde a Resurrection. Tis vaine to prayse; they're to themselves a glory, And silence is our sweetest Oratory. For he that names but FLETCHER must needs be Found guilty of a loud hyperbole. His fancy so transcendently aspires, He showes himselfe a witt, who but admires. Here are no volumes stuft with cheverle sence, The very Anagrams of Eloquence, Nor long-long-winded sentences that be, Being rightly spelld, but Witts Stenographie. Nor words, as voyd of Reason, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... sand-grouse," and "speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth," is Komayt's saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, "The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning," it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed. In Sind it is called the "rock pigeon" and it is not unlike a grey partridge ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in baptism his Norman name of "Exupere," Madame Latournelle is still so surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five years and seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary, with her breast and her milk,—an hyperbole which alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. "How handsome he is, that son of mine!" she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. "He is like you," Modeste ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... singing comedienne, Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil he wrote: "Harry Barnes, Singing and Talking." Then he shook hands with the secretary of the organization and walked back to his boarding-house in a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... enallage[obs3], catachresis[obs3]; metonymy[Gram], synecdoche[Semant]; autonomasia|!, irony, figurativeness &c. adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis[obs3], type, anagoge[obs3], simile, personification, prosopopoeia[obs3], allegory, apologue[obs3], parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration , hyperbole &c. 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514a V. employ -metaphor &c. n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical[obs3], typical, tralatitious[obs3], parabolic, allegorical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Pericles to the great tribunal before which he urged his defence, "that I have expended too much, charge the sums to my account, not yours—but on this condition, let the edifices be inscribed with my name, not that of the Athenian people." This mode of defence, though perhaps but an oratorical hyperbole [262], conveyed a rebuke which the Athenians were an audience calculated to answer but in one way—they dismissed the accusation, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the recollection that the mere sight of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning being thus given,—"and that I might not be exalted, a thorn in the flesh [caused] by the exceeding greatness (for this rather than 'abundance' seems ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the messenger, with presents more valueless, and an assurance of friendship more sonorous, more complete in rhetoric and aptness of hyperbole, and when the messenger had gone Bosambo showed his appreciation of N'gori's love by doubling the guard about the Ochori city and sending a strong picket under his chief headman ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... and peach-blossom complexion, her soft contralto voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as per foregoing bald description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of these chronicles, was dazzled ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to rid himself of this mob, which threatened to increase, "it seems to me that you need not work up hyperbole and parable to attack an old friend as if he were a booby. To-morrow night at Lointier's——" he cried, seeing a woman come by, whom ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... had not, however, been in vain. It is no hyperbole of the historian of the reformed churches, when he likens their cells to five pulpits, from which the Word of God resounded through the entire city and much farther.[587] The results of their heroic fortitude, and of the wide dissemination of copies ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... style of fashion, that is of effrontery, as even the fools by whom they are aped, or the lawyers and statesmen themselves by whom they are defended. This I own is a bold assertion; and is perhaps a hyperbole! Yes, yes: it is comparing mole hills to mountains. But ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... likely places in search of a pipe and tobacco, but without avail. I even extended my researches into the pantry, and thence into the sacred precincts of the front parlour. But the tobacco-famine raged equally everywhere. The place was a residence, but by no stretch of hyperbole could you ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and August, the scarlet lobelia, the cardinal-flower, is to be found. Never was cardinal so robed. If Herbert's rose, in poetic hyperbole, with its "hue angry and brave, bids the rash gazer wipe his eye," certainly such a bed of lobelia as I once saw on the road to "Rollo's Camp" was anything but what the Scotch would call "a sight for sair een." For the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... thus be readily made during a day, and it is indisputably one of the finest mountain sights in Europe. As Lord Bute, (quoted in the Tour Through the Pyrenees,) cried when there, many years ago, in old-time hyperbole, "If I were now at the extremity of India, and suspected the existence of what I see at this moment, I should immediately leave, in order to enjoy and admire it." Perhaps this sentiment should merit consideration from, other seekers of noble scenery; it ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the tones of violent generations,—of men whose intensity, though yielding extraordinary beauty and grandeur, yielded also obscurity and extravagance; men whom the love of women too often impelled to utter fantastic hyperbole, and the love of honor to glorify preposterous adventures; quarrelsome men, who assailed their opponents with rancorous personalities; doctrinaires, who employed their fiery energy of mind in the creation of rigid systems of religion and government; uncompromising men, who devoted to ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... satisfying it. He, too, made a "ladder of his observations to climb to God." He, too, was "free from vice, because he had no occasion to employ it." "Such gifts," said the turbulent Bishop Atterbury of him, "I did not think had been the portion of any but angels." After this it is no hyperbole to say, as Earle does of the contemplative man, "He has learnt all can here be taught him, and comes now to heaven to ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous. Light-hearted, wrongheaded, impulsive, uncalculating, with an Oriental love of hyperbole, and too often a common dislike of cold water and of that gem which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, the Celtic elements of their character do not readily accommodate themselves to those of the hard, cool, self-relying ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... la Lune," exaggerates the romantic so decidedly as to seem ironical. It is hard to say whether it is hyperbole or parody. See Petit de Julleville, vol. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to a man's, whose worth, Without hyperbole, I thus may praise; One at least studious of deserving well, And, to speak truth, indeed deserving well. Potential merit stands for actual, Where only opportunity doth want, Not will, nor power; both which in him ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... which befell the early Cumry; and whosoever doubts its power for the purpose of abstruse reasoning, let him study a work called Rhetorick, by Master William Salisbury, written about the year 1570, and I think he will admit that there is no hyperbole, or, as a Welshman would call it, gorwireb, in what I have said with respect to the capabilities ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Pope, or at least to his suggestions. It resembles "The Dunciad" in containing more bitterness than humour. Examples are given of the "Pert style," the "Alamode" style, the "Finical style." The exceptions taken to such hyperbole as the following, seem to be the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... plethoric, soft movement of a subsiding pillow. The puckers of his cumbrous eyelids drew a little closer together; his bilious eyes peered out cautiously between them, like sallow assassins watching through curtained windows; for a minute or so he kept up what might without hyperbole be called a ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... morrow "The Big Wind" would make his maiden address in the House, taking as his subject "two or three important matters in connection with the budget. A rare treat is in store for those who will be able to attend," and all the rest of the hyperbole that the party papers—except yours, dear reader—are wont to indulge in. Of course, the galleries of the House were crowded, and on the floor every member was in his seat. In the press gallery the attendance ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... admirable man of action, a fiery and impassioned orator, the highly polemical historian of the Church, after the manner of Bossuet in his History of Variations. Saint Basil, termed by his admirers "the Great," without there being much hyperbole in the qualification, was an incomparable orator. He, as it were, reigned over Eastern Christianity, thanks to his word, his skill, and his courage. Even to us his works possess charm. He intermingled the finest ideas of Plato and of Christianity in the happiest and most ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... weighed his expressions when he spoke of the debasement of morals among the Irish. It is no hyperbole to speak of the nation as a martyr; a martyr in any sense of the word: to the Christian, a Christian martyr. And yet it is by that fact guilty of immorality, or, as he puts it, debased in morals! The point is not worth arguing. But in contrasting the two nations, the nation debased and the nation ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the art of advertising better than Barnum. Knowing that mammon is ever caught with glare, he took pains that his posters should be larger, his transparencies more brilliant, his puffing more persistent than anybody elses. And if he resorted to hyperbole at times in his advertisements, it was always his boast that no one ever went away from his Museum, without having received the worth of his money. It used to amuse Mr. Barnum later in life, to relate some of the unique advertising dodges ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... expressed the wish. He did not, however, give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is, that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him to magnify the ruin accomplished by the Conquistadores, he has exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of its towns, and the evidences of its civilization. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... characterized by no adequate word but the word magnificent, (a word too often and lightly abused.) In reality, speaking of women, I have seen many beautiful figures, but hardly one except Agnes that could, without hyperbole, be styled truly and memorably magnificent. Though in the first order of tall women, yet, being full in person, and with a symmetry that was absolutely faultless, she seemed to the random sight as little above the ordinary height. Possibly from the dignity of her person, assisted by the dignity ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... be an indefinite degree of hyperbole. The language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever rhetorical luxuriance ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless literally true that the world might be wrapped in the books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the Claimant,) ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... der Thiere Trieb,' says Wallenstein; 'the very savage drinks not with the victim, into whose breast he means to plunge a sword.' Danton was warned that Robespierre was plotting his arrest. 'If I thought he had the bare idea,' said Danton with something of Gargantuan hyperbole, 'I would eat his bowels out.' Such was the disdain with which the 'giant of the mighty bone and bold emprise' thought of our meagre-hearted pedant. The truth is that in the stormy and distracted times of politics, and perhaps in all times, contempt is a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... every day during his illness. Good Mrs. Lewin had taken the letters to him, and had brought her his replies. He had not written so often, or at such length, as she, and had pleaded the languor of convalescence as his excuse; but all his billets-doux had been in the same delicious hyperbole, the language of the Pays du Tendre. She sat silent while her visitors talked about him, plucking a reputation as mercilessly as a kitchen wench plucks a fowl. He was gone. He had left the country deep in debt. It was his landlord who ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... government I not only never received remuneration, nor ever expected it; but I was never honoured with a single acknowledgment, or expression of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful or matter of regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion that the late war (I trust that the epithet is not prematurely applied) was a war produced by the Morning Post; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard the circumstance, that I was a specified object of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... people,—a limitation which is also presupposed by the description in the 11th and subsequent verses. In iii. 12, the preservation of a small remnant amidst the general destruction had been promised. The greater number of interpreters, in order to reconcile this apparent contradiction, assume an hyperbole in vers. 1-4. But this assumption is certainly erroneous. The ground of this great copiousness,—the reason why the prophet represents the same thought in aspects so various,—is evidently to prevent every idea of an hyperbole,—to show that the words are to be taken in all their strictness ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... like a boast—like one of those picturesque expressions with which the Eastern mind enjoys to overstate its case. But he reflected on it. As an Orientalist of admitted distinction he had long ago concluded that hyperbole in the East is always based on some fact hidden in the user's mind, often without the user's knowledge. He had written a paper on that very subject, which the Spectator printed with favorable editorial comment; and ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... would venture to ask him to take down the third volume, and read the concluding pages, of which Coleridge used to say that they were the finest specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English, adding with forgivable hyperbole, that they were more to the Duke's fame and glory than a campaign. 'Foresight and enterprise with our commander went hand in hand; he never advanced but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never retreated but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior enemy,' ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... prosaic poetry, without its numbers or magnificence; a heap of monstrous stories, only more conspicuous by their incredibility. He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint {26} on his cheeks; how would such ornaments ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... almost the entire world, had trodden the soil of Spain only a few hours, when disembarking in Barcelona from the transatlantic liner which he had commanded. The Spaniards inspired her both with fear and attraction. A noble gravity reposed in the depths of their ardent hyperbole. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... returned the other, "or what remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law. But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anything could mitigate the distress of the American people in their present affliction, it might surely be the sympathy which is expressed by the people of this country. We are not using the language of hyperbole in describing the manifestation of feeling as unexampled. Nothing like it has been witnessed in our generation.... But President Lincoln was only the chief of a foreign State, and of a State with which we were not infrequently in diplomatic or political ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... I was legitimately using language that might be called exaggerated. Hyperbole is, I believe, the term grammarians use for it. I didn't expect you, dear, to take me up so literally. It isn't like you. You generally have more imagination. As a matter of fact, Davenant's offer was that of ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... part in Byron himself. His weariness was a genuine outcome of the influence of the time upon a character consumed by passion. His lot was cast among spent forces, and, while it is no hyperbole to say that he was himself the most enormous force of his time, he was only half conscious of this, if indeed he did not always inwardly shrink from crediting his own power and strength, as so many strong men habitually do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... Pallas that stands on the mantelpiece, and said bitterly, 'Edna Earl has no more heart than that marble Athena.' Whereupon I replied, 'Take care, Gordon. I notice that of late you seem inclined to deal rather too freely in hyperbole. Edna's heart may resemble the rich veins of gold, which in some mines run not near the surface but deep in the masses of quartz. Because you can not obtain it, you have no right to declare that it does not exist. You will probably live ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to say of a woman, that she only does not destroy where she passes. She should revive; the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am rushing into wild hyperbole? Pardon me, not a whit—I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You have heard it said—(and I believe there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one)—that flowers only flourish rightly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... weather is very hot now, and the soil chalk, and the dust white, I assure you it is very difficult, powdered as both are all over, to distinguish a tree from a hairdresser. Lest this should sound like a travelling hyperbole, I must advertise your lordship, that there is little difference in their heights; for, a tree of thirty years' growth being liable to be marked as royal timber, the proprietors take care not to let their trees live to the age of being enlisted, but burn them, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... amity for the future. In answer to this desire, eighteen chief men and their attendants, making in all about fifty, came together from the nine tribes of the nation, and met him in solemn council on the afternoon of May 18th. Speeches, not lacking in interest, but full of Indian hyperbole and the inflations of interpreters, were made by the chiefs, and answered by Oglethorpe through the medium of Messrs. Wiggin and Musgrove; and on May ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... petals from a red rose in a vase near her, and tossed them in the air—"these are the real wealth of the world. And Brutus says I am stilted, exaggerated in my conversation, given to metaphor and hyperbole. That is because I dare to express what I feel, and since everywhere I see parables I ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... recurring in the classical poets (cf. e.g. Ovid., Met. xiii. 293, immunemque aequoris Arcton, "the Bear that never touches the sea"). The idea that these stars are mostly hidden by clouds, though perpetually in view, is a poetic hyperbole intended to enhance the uniqueness of the Star ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... visitor his impression of the impulse and the spectacle: Said he: "I never saw any thing like it:" language which seems curiously undertoned, considering its application; but from the taciturn Commander it was equivalent to a superlative or hyperbole from the talkative. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... away, as they else might be, by an unsophisticated orator, Grammar and Logic are necessary to the perfection of Rhetoric. Not that Rhetoric is in bondage to those other sciences; for foreign idioms and such figures as the ellipsis, the anacoluthon, the oxymoron, the hyperbole, and violent inversions have their place in the magnificent style; but authors unacquainted with Grammar and Logic are not likely to place such figures well and wisely. Indeed, common idioms, though both grammatically ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, "What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock's humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis?" ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... quiet, unobtrusive, impeccable "seaman." He had a number, what was it? Three-nine-(fool not to write it down!) three-nine-something. Was that his number during his last imprisonment? Had he spoken in terrific hyperbole when he admitted that no doubt it was "a picturesque life"? Good God! How blind we had been! And Miss Fraenkel's shot in the dark, was it after all the truth? Had he ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... language to my mind (Still the phrase is wide or scant), To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrain'd hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors, (Opp. tom. i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam.) But the ten husbands in a month of the poet Martial, is an extravagant hyperbole, (l. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... often themselves the cause of their being misrepresented; there is no country perhaps, in which the habit of deceiving for amusement, or what is termed hoaxing, is so common. Indeed this and the hyperbole constitute the major part of American humour. If they have the slightest suspicion that a foreigner is about to write a book, nothing appears to give them so much pleasure as to try to mislead him; this has constantly been practised upon me, and for all I know, they may in some instances ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... attach to the phrase of "a perfect gentleman," applying each sentence to his Right Honourable friend with an emphasis that seemed to burst from his heart. To all of the audience, save two, it was an eulogium which the fervent sincerity of the eulogist alone saved from hyperbole. But Levy rubbed his hands, and chuckled inly; and Egerton hung his head, and moved restlessly on his seat. Every word that Harley uttered lodged an arrow in Audley's breast. Amidst the cheers that followed this admirable sketch of the "loyal man," Harley recognized Leonard's enthusiastic voice. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or reflective mind Karl's startling metaphors were harmless hyperbole or garrulous trope of brilliant, idealistic sentiment, but such fired credulous natures to white heat of anarchy. It became essential to German tranquillity that Karl Ludwig ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Why, when he spoke—it was positively music! When he smiled—it was heaven! His smile, to Sophia, was one of those natural phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to shed tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia's sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. She was utterly obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. Nothing would have persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or could possibly exist. And it was her intense ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... George Daniel's singular and precious collection, disposed of in 1864, was an ordinary auctioneer's compilation; except that many of the owner's MSS. notes written on the fly-leaves were introduced by way of whetting the appetites of competitors; and to say that a vein of hyperbole pervaded these remarks is a mild expression; they emanated, we have to remember, from an accountant. The books, however, spoke for themselves. The printed account of them, viewed as a work of reference, must be read cum grano ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind (Still the phrase is wide or scant), To take leave of thee, Great Plant! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate yet love thee so, That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passions to proceed More from a mistress than ...
— English Satires • Various
... spot in the Ardennes, promised to secure this desired end, let it be accepted without hesitation. For the proverbial creaking, yet long-hanging, gate—here Henrietta had the delicacy to take refuge in hyperbole—she had no liking whatever. She could not remember the time when Darby and Joan had struck her as an otherwise than preposterous couple, offspring ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... than the saying that "A lucky man's hens lay eggs with double yolks;" but this is altogether too common and natural a phenomenon to satisfy the mountaineer's conception of the power of luck; so he coolly knocks the subject flat with the audacious hyperbole, "A lucky man's horse and mare both have colts." Fortune and misfortune present themselves to the German mind as two buckets in a well; but to the Caucasian mountaineer "Fortune is like a cock's tail on a windy day" (i.e., first on one side and then on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... live of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes a saving voyage. An husbandman's gains are almost certain; quibus ipse Jupiter nocere non potest (whom Jove himself can't harm) ('tis [2002]Cato's hyperbole, a great husband himself); only scholars methinks are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards. For first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all are not capable and docile, [2003]ex omniligno non fit ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and without hyperbole—stating that no one could have been more considerate or just than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen with his own eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common soldiers as the German army entered the outskirts of the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... spontaneously and inevitably arise. Such a one we believe was Jesus of Nazareth, the most exalted religious genius whom God ever sent upon the earth; in himself an embodied revelation; humanity in its divinest phase, 'God manifest in the flesh,' according to eastern hyperbole; an exemplar given in an early age of the world to show what man may and should become in the course of ages; in his progress towards the realization of his destiny; an individual gifted with a grand, clear intellect, a noble soul, a fine organization, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... metonymy[Gram], synecdoche[Semant]; autonomasia|!, irony, figurativeness &c. adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis[obs3], type, anagoge[obs3], simile, personification, prosopopoeia[obs3], allegory, apologue[obs3], parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration , hyperbole &c. 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514a V. employ -metaphor &c. n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical[obs3], typical, tralatitious[obs3], parabolic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as nothing more than the pawns of the bloody game called battle. And it is because man is thus made, that society ought to protect those whom fate exposes to the action of these "humane necessities." Now the character of Dr. Griffon once admitted (and it can be admitted without much hyperbole), the inmates of this hospital had then no guarantee, no recourse against the scientific barbarity of his experiments; for there exists a grievous hiatus in the organization of the civil hospitals. We will point it out here, so that we may be understood. Military hospitals are ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that the daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless literally true that the world might be wrapped in the books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Bengal reading Gooranamatitejasa is what I adopt. The Bombay reading, Ghoranamapnitaujasam involves a useless hyperbole. Of course, atitejasa qualifies dhanusha ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was a saint endowed with remarkable energy and really moulded by the Saviour! In her writings she is an eloquent and subtle theologian, an ardent and rapturous mystic, dealing in metaphors and hyperbole, in tangible parallels, passionate questionings, and apostrophes; she resembles both Saint Denys the Areopagite and Saint Maddalena dei Pazzi; Saint Denys in matter, Saint Maddalena in manner. As a writer, no doubt she is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... humoured, and favoured us with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his, a professor in the university of Pisa. You would laugh to see the hyperbolical terms in which he mentioned your humble servant; but Italy is the native country of hyperbole. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... knot-hole in the door. The last phrase was the puzzler. It read at first like a boast—like one of those picturesque expressions with which the Eastern mind enjoys to overstate its case. But he reflected on it. As an Orientalist of admitted distinction he had long ago concluded that hyperbole in the East is always based on some fact hidden in the user's mind, often without the user's knowledge. He had written a paper on that very subject, which the Spectator printed with favorable editorial comment; and Mendelsohn K. C. had written ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... exiled Emperor had become their hero and their martyr, just as impressively as he was and remained that of the French; and from them and other sources were handed down to the generation of merchant seamen those tales which were told with the usual love of hyperbole characteristic of the sailor, and wiled away many dreary hours while traversing trackless oceans. They would talk about the sea fights of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the battles of Arcola, Marengo, Jena, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... we may not be accused of plagiarism, we acknowledge ourselves indebted for the hyperbole contained in the last two lines of these introductory stanzas, to an original recommendation for a proper display of rapture, as contained in the following couplet by one Peter Ker, wherein he very humanely invites all the vessels belonging to Great Britain to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... is here now. Why did Jonathan visit David in the gloomy wood that day and uncrown himself for him? It was just this reason: It was because he loved him. Again and again the story had said that Jonathan loved David as his own soul. I thought it was a mere hyperbole at first. I thought it might be a kind of poetic way of putting it, but it was only sober truth. And David spoke sober truth in that noble and manly lamentation when he said, "Thy love was wonderful to me, passing ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... experienced. "Ah, Mrs Charlton," she cried, "what refuge have I now from ridicule, or perhaps disgrace! Mr Delvile has been detected watching me in disguise! he has been discovered at this late hour meeting me in private! The story will reach his family with all the hyperbole of exaggeration;—how will his noble mother disdain me! how cruelly shall I sink before the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... these men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying into metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbole which has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the conditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt and reproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist, his genius drew at once its ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Love.) Keeps the respectful look and gesture. (See Modesty and Veneration.) The eyes are opened wide, and now and then raised toward heaven. The mouth is opened. The hands are lifted up. The tone of the voice rapturous. This passion expresses itself copiously, making great use of the figure hyperbole. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... monstrous stories, only more conspicuous by their incredibility. He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint {26} on his cheeks; how would such ornaments ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... a la Lune," exaggerates the romantic so decidedly as to seem ironical. It is hard to say whether it is hyperbole or parody. See Petit de Julleville, vol. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... common, but the name, the outward form, and the mythological materials; and yet they seem to have been composed with the obvious purpose of surpassing them; in which attempt they succeed as much as a hollow hyperbole would in competition with a most fervent truth. Every tragical common-place is worried out to the last gasp; all is phrase; and even the most common remark is forced and stilted. A total poverty of sentiment is dressed out with wit and acuteness. There ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... vivid hyperbole being exhausted, Mrs. Lester and I expressed ourselves simply to the same effect. We turned, heedful no longer of the tides, and travelled delightfully along the Artichoke road until we reached a brown dwelling that I knew could be none ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... individual independence of trait, exuberance of inventive thought, and splendour of execution in detached passages—the Elizabethan drama from Sackville to Shirley stands alone in the history of the world. The absurd overestimate which has sometimes been made of its individual practitioners, the hyperbole of the language which has been used to describe them, the puerile and almost inconceivable folly of some of their scholiasts and parasitic students, find a certain excuse in this truth—a truth which ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... pictures he has music—music not very brilliant or varied, but admirably matching his painting, soft, dreamy, not so much monotonous as uniform with a soothing uniformity. Few poets deserve better than William of Lorris the famous hyperbole which Greek furnished in turn to Latin and to English. He is indeed "softer than sleep," and, as soft sleep is, laden with gracious and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the Muses have beene dead and gone I know they'll finde a Resurrection. Tis vaine to prayse; they're to themselves a glory, And silence is our sweetest Oratory. For he that names but FLETCHER must needs be Found guilty of a loud hyperbole. His fancy so transcendently aspires, He showes himselfe a witt, who but admires. Here are no volumes stuft with cheverle sence, The very Anagrams of Eloquence, Nor long-long-winded sentences that be, Being rightly ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... may differ in kind. Like may be feeble and cool, and it never has the intensity of love. We may like or even love a person; we only like the most palatable kind of food. With an infinitive, like is the common word, love being appropriate only in the hyperbole of poetical ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... children, and talking to her friends of the prodigious sacrifice she was about to make for her brother and his family, as if it had been the cutting off of a hand or the plucking out of an eye. To have heard her, anyone unaccustomed to the hyperbole of fashionable language would have deemed Botany Bay the nearest possible point of destination. Parting from her fashionable acquaintances was tearing herself from all she loved; quitting London was bidding adieu ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... around them. There, from his character, by which he recommended himself as the friend of God, he might very naturally be looked upon as a religious teacher, and men might gather together to learn from his lips or profit by his example. Hence, making due allowance for Eastern hyperbole, the statement of the Book of Jasher (chap. xxvi. verse 36) is not undeserving of credit, where it is said that "Abraham brought all the children of the land to the service of God, and he taught them the ways of the Lord." The same ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... moral ulcers to the roots and to raise moribund ideals from the dust, breathing his own vitality into them, till they rose before our eyes as living aspirations. The spiritual joy of which he wrote was no rhetorical hyperbole; it was manifest in the man himself, and was the fount of the lofty idealism which made him not only "the Conscience of Russia" ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... in these earlier Nights. There is already some artificiality even in his grief, and feeling often slides into rhetoric, but through it all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of pain, which makes us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole: ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for pre-eminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist his oratory ...
— Options • O. Henry
... HYPERBOLE. The magnifying of things beyond their natural limits is called hyperbole. Language that signifies, literally, more than the exact truth, more than is really intended to be represented, by which a thing is represented greater or less, better or worse than ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... they were, the more it has tended to take the place of Hebraism. But the Platonists, too, when left to their instincts, follow their master in attributing power and existence, by a sort of cumulative worship and imaginative hyperbole, to what in the first place they worship because it is good. To divorce, then, as the modernists do, the history of the world from the story of salvation, and God's government and the sanctions of religion from the operation of matter, is a fundamental apostasy ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... case there may be an indefinite degree of hyperbole. The language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever rhetorical luxuriance he ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... "speak not falsely, for the Kata sayeth sooth," is Komayt's saying. It is an emblem of swiftness: when the brigand poet Shanfara boasts, "The ash-coloured Katas can drink only my leavings, after hastening all night to slake their thirst in the morning," it is a hyperbole boasting of his speed. In Sind it is called the "rock pigeon" and it is not unlike a grey partridge when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Hyperbole in estimating the value of the translator's work is not common among Lord Morley's successors, but their very recognition of the secondary importance of translation often resulted in a modest yet dignified insistence on its real value. Richard Eden says that he has labored "not as an author ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... at Montreal, lending his aid in the defence of that part of the colony against raiding bands of Iroquois which were once again proving a menace. At Boucherville, in 1694, one historian tells us with characteristic hyperbole, Durantaye killed ten Iroquois with his own hand. Mohawks were not, as a rule, so easy to catch or kill. Two years later he commanded a detachment of troops and militiamen in operations against his old-time foes, and in 1698 he was ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... in some systems of the pressure of population upon food; but the idea of any pressure from any quarter upon space is hardly yet familiar. Still, I suppose that many a reader must have been struck with the naive simplicity of the hyperbole of St. John, [2] perhaps a solitary unit of its kind in the New Testament: "the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... met here on the greatest occasion that, I believe, England ever saw; having upon your shoulders the interests of three great nations, with the territories belonging to them: and truly I believe I may say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders the interest of all the Christian people in the world. And the expectation is, that I should let you know, as far as I have cognisance of it, the occasion of your assembling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... expressed to a visitor his impression of the impulse and the spectacle: Said he: "I never saw any thing like it:" language which seems curiously undertoned, considering its application; but from the taciturn Commander it was equivalent to a superlative or hyperbole from the talkative. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... stanzas LVII-LXIX of Canto I.; that, in short, they are meant to be read as though they were an after-thought of James Thomson's. Their author, therefore, has rightly imparted to them the curiously blended flavour of 'romantic melancholy and slippered mirth,' of dreamlike vagueness and smiling hyperbole, which forms the distinctive mark of Thomson's poem; and thus the Poet and the Philosopher-Friend of Wordsworth's stanzas, like Thomson's companion sketches of the splenetic Solitary, the 'bard more fat than bard beseems,' and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... had a son Might merit commendations equal[350] with him. I'll tell you what he is: he is a youth, A noble branch, increasing blessed fruit, Where caterpillar vice dare not to touch: He bears[351] himself with so much gravity, Praise cannot praise him with hyperbole: He is one, whom older look upon as on a book: Wherein are printed noble sentences For them to rule their lives by. Indeed he is one, All emulate his ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... midst of their affected strangeness, a sickliness about his melodies despite their evidently FORCED unlikeness to familiar phrases, an utter ignorance of design everywhere apparent in his lengthened works...The entire works of Chopin present a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and excruciating cacophony. When he is not THUS singular, he is no better than Strauss or any other waltz compounder... such as admire Chopin, and they are legion, will admire these Mazurkas, which are supereminently ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... acknowledge, that the first suggestion on such events is "nos officiers ont ete gagnes," [Our officers were bought.] or "sans la trahison ce ne seroit pas arrive." [This could not have happened without treachery.]—Pope's hyperbole of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... then this hyperbole seem too much for an eastern poet, though some commentators of name strain hard in this place for a new ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... that she exerts her utmost powers to serve him; that she mourns at his misfortunes, promises him long before hand to the world; and when the world, by its sins, is unworthy to possess him longer, heaven, which calls him home, hangs out new lights, etc. With this hyperbole M. Balzac regaled Cardinal Richelieu, adding, that to form such a minister, universal nature was on the stretch; God gives him first by promise, and makes him the expectation of ages. For this he was attacked by the critics, but he defended himself; alleging, that other panegyrics ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... hall, or halau, where a performance was under way. Admission was conditioned, however, on the utterance of a password at the door. A snatch of song, an oli, denominated mele kahea, or mele wehe puka, was chanted, which, on being recognized by those within, was answered in the same language of hyperbole, and ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... known that the Chinese attach an extravagantly superior value to the Malay camphor, and probably its value in Marco's day was higher than it is now, but still its estimate as worth its weight in gold looks like hyperbole. Forrest, a century ago, says Barus Camphor was in the Chinese market worth nearly its weight in silver, and this is true still. The price is commonly estimated at 100 times that of the Chinese camphor. The whole quantity exported from the Barus territory goes to China. De Vriese ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... you could call it real spelling. They spelled from the grammars, hyperbole, synecdoche, and epizeuxis. They spelled from the physiology, chlorophyll, coccyx, arytenoid, and the names of the bones and nerves, and all the ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... so bald and lifeless. We know by experience that even a European language loses in the process of translation which is, except in very rare instances, a purely mechanical art. How much more so must be the case in regard to an Oriental language with its depths of hyperbole and replete with imagery, idealism, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... is wide or scant), To take leave of thee, Great Plant! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate yet love thee so, That, whichever thing I show, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passions to proceed More from a ...
— English Satires • Various
... 39. A HYPERBOLE is an exaggeration in which more is expressed than is intended to be understood. Example.—"I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." John 21:25—meaning that a ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses as this; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture, which the strongest powers of deglutition have sometimes rejected as that of Eastern hyperbole, is literally verified at every step in the land of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso for an instant; yet from the summit of the castle of Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty utterly deserted and perfectly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the most sensible and practical of all the Funds, naturally Princess Mary's Gift Book (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is going to figure large in this year's list of things-not-to-forget. Honestly and without hyperbole, I question if a better collection has ever been brought together. From the first page (on which you will find a charming portrait by Mr. J. J. SHANNON of the gracious young lady to whose timely inspiration ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... said that "love makes gods of men," and we have taken this phrase as a charming bit of hyperbole, whereas it is a literal truth, because when two individual souls have rounded and balanced their natures by means of love, they come together in an eternal union, and are immortal; "in their flesh they have seen God," and the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... natural imagery in the former. In the Pleasures of Hope Mr. Campbell had not completely emancipated himself from the trammels of the more artificial style of poetry—from epigram, and antithesis, and hyperbole. The best line in it, in which earthly joys ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... under Harold began to draw near to each other." Macaulay was a great scene painter, who neglected delicate truths of detail for exaggerated distemper effects. He used the {283} rhetorical machinery of climax and hyperbole for all that it was worth, and he "made points"—as in his essay on Bacon—by creating antithesis. In his History of England, he inaugurated the picturesque method of historical writing. The book was as fascinating as any novel. Macaulay, like Scott, had the historic imagination, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... army was considered as being still more masterly and eloquent, and it was certainly well suited to the taste of French soldiers, who, as Bourrienne remarks, are wonderfully pleased with grandiloquence, metaphor, and hyperbole, though they do not always understand what they mean. Even a French author of some distinction praises this address as something sublime. "The proclamation to the army," says he, "is full of energy: it could not fail to make all military imaginations vibrate. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Sons were once dining in one of the little Bohemian restaurants of San Francisco. Two of them made a bet with the others that they could kiss every woman in the room. They went from table to table and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain of hyperbole, explained their predicament to each lady, concluding with a respectful demand for a kiss. Every woman in the room (with the gallant indulgence of her swain) acceded to this amazing request. In fifteen minutes all the kisses were collected ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... indeed compelled him) that Rickman was the sort of young fool for which there is no salvation. And by the time Rickman had replied with suitable hyperbole; and Maddox, because of the great love he bore to Rickman, had observed that if Rickman chose to cut his confused throat he might do so without its being a matter of permanent regret to Maddox; and Rickman, because of the great love he bore to Maddox, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... such! Why, when he spoke—it was positively music! When he smiled—it was heaven! His smile, to Sophia, was one of those natural phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to shed tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia's sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. She was utterly obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. Nothing would have persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or could possibly exist. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... verb, which none but a master hand could have coined: a more splendid metonymy could not be applied upon a more trivial occasion; the lofty idea of raising a metal to the skies is substituted for the mean thought of tossing up a halfpenny. Our orator compresses his hyperbole into a single word. Thus the mind is prevented from dwelling long enough upon the figure to perceive its enormity. This is the perfection of the art. Let the genius of French exaggeration and of eastern hyperbole hide ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... followed Ritter in taking trecenos as loosely put for 365, a steer for each day in the year. The hyperbole, as he says, would otherwise be too extravagant. And richer ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... for the moment, I am content to take Mr. Shorthouse's statement as it stands, and to say that a loving pride in the English Church has been the permanent passion of my life. I hold with Dean Church, a man not given to hyperbole, that "in spite of inconsistencies and menacing troubles, she is still the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... purest, the wisest and the most loving of all human beings; and have attributed such language as that in the text, which—translate it as you will—ascribes absolute divinity, and nothing less, to our Lord Jesus Christ—they have attributed it, I say, to some fondness for Oriental hyperbole, and mystic Theosophy, in the minds of the Apostles. Others, again, have gone further, and been, I think, more logically honest. They have perceived that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as His words are reported, attributed divinity to Himself, just as much as did His Apostles. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventialism and expediency; vindicate the majesty of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... when disembarking in Barcelona from the transatlantic liner which he had commanded. The Spaniards inspired her both with fear and attraction. A noble gravity reposed in the depths of their ardent hyperbole. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then He quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... off-hand method of disposing of such a nice sharp quillet of the Law!... He is talking to them about my means, and has thrown out a rather apt suggestion that I may have been led by sheer vaingloriousness and Oriental love of hyperbole into exaggerating my resources.... However, he "sees no reason to doubt my competence to pay a reasonable amount of damages"—an opinion with which I am not so pleased. "If the jury think me a gay sort of Hindoo deceiver, who has heartlessly trifled with the affections of a simple, unsuspecting ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... says the text which to us appears hyperbole run mad. So when King Omar (vol. ii. 123) violently rapes the unfortunate Princess Abrizah "the blood runs down the calves of her legs." This is not ignorance, but that systematic exaggeration which is held necessary ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... [He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister] I know not that cloister, though it may etymologically signify any thing shut is used by our author, otherwise than for a monastery, and therefore I cannot guess whence this hyperbole could take its original: perhaps it means only this: He will steal any thing, however trifling, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... perfect tune, and with such exquisite taste, that I was enchanted. Rome is famous for serenades and serenaders; but at this season they are seldom heard. I remember at Venice being wakened in the dead of the night by such delicious music, that (to use a hyperbole common in the mouths of this poetical people) I was "transported to the seventh heaven:" before I could perfectly recollect myself, the music ceased, the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses threw open their casements, and vehemently ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in Byron himself. His weariness was a genuine outcome of the influence of the time upon a character consumed by passion. His lot was cast among spent forces, and, while it is no hyperbole to say that he was himself the most enormous force of his time, he was only half conscious of this, if indeed he did not always inwardly shrink from crediting his own power and strength, as so many ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... Usually mere hyperbole, a lamentable fault of our national literature. Even our presidents, before Roosevelt, called their dwelling ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... which we boys had accustomed him; for, once upon the sidewalk, he began to prance and gambol in the graceful fashion of his kind. It so happened that the nurse-girl of the mayor of the town, a huge Swede woman as broad as she was long (which is almost hyperbole), came trundling her charge up the board walk at the precise moment that Thumper bowled over a gentleman in front and ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... husaro. Hustle pusxegi. Hut budo. Hutch kesto. Hyacinth hiacinto. Hydra hidro. Hydrogen hidrogeno. Hydropathy akvokuraco. Hydrophobia hidrofobio. Hydrostatic hidrostatika. Hyena hieno. Hygrometer higrometro. Hygrometry higrometrio. Hymn himno. Hyperbole hiperbolo. Hyphen streketo. Hypnotic hipnota. Hypnotism hipnotismo. Hypnotize hipnotigi. Hypochondria hipohxondrio. Hypocrisy hipokriteco. Hypocrite hipokritulo. Hypocritical hipokrita. Hypothesis hipotezo. Hypotenuse hipotenuzo. Hyssop hisopo. Hysterical ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... story. The apathy and decay of native life, lacking all the scope and interest common to a strenuous age, appears galvanised into some fleeting semblance of vitality by the extravaganza presented to it, for the language of hyperbole is the natural expression of Eastern thought, and penetrates into mental recesses unknown and unexplored by the relater of unvarnished facts. The quick response of the native mind to Nature's teaching, and the wealth of tradition ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... noblesse in literature, one which—to reverse the contrast just made—annihilates Dickens's caricature thereof in A Tale of Two Cities. The single-handed defence of La Tourgue by "L'Imanus" has of course a good deal of the hyperbole which began with Quasimodo's similar act in Notre-Dame; but the reader who cannot "let himself go" with it is to be pitied. Nowhere is Hugo's child-worship more agreeably shown than in the three first chapters of the third volume. And, sinking particulars for ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... being its "chief" delights-and then the pre-eminent beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence, the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more passionate admiration of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and their attendants, making in all about fifty, came together from the nine tribes of the nation, and met him in solemn council on the afternoon of May 18th. Speeches, not lacking in interest, but full of Indian hyperbole and the inflations of interpreters, were made by the chiefs, and answered by Oglethorpe through the medium of Messrs. Wiggin and Musgrove; and on May 21st the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... attention, to employ the idle, to popularise your Highness's rule, and, if it were possible, to enable him to reduce the taxes at a blow and to a notable amount. The proposed expedition - for it cannot without hyperbole be called a war - seemed to the council to combine the various characters required; a marked improvement in the public sentiment has followed even upon our preparations; and I cannot doubt that when ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may supplant him on the throne. This sacrifice, prompted by evil counselors, results in a train of tragic episodes, including Mariamne's death and Herod's madness. The lines in which Herod speaks of thinking in gold and dreaming in silver call to mind the hyperbole and music of Marlowe's ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... be wholly a scientific investigator to appreciate the beauties of Buitenzorg. There is here one view which has been described over and over again, oftentimes in the language of hyperbole—the view of the Tjidani Valley from the verandah of Bellevue Hotel. It is, indeed, difficult to avoid the use of extravagant language in the attempt to describe ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... considered it an epoch in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall of Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed I think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has been applied—'See Rome and die:' but in your case I would propose an emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Welsh blood, certainly of Celtic sympathies, and he set himself more swiftly though more subtly than Ruskin or Swinburne to undermining the enormous complacency of John Bull. He also had a sincere hope in the strength of womanhood, and may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have begotten gigantic daughters. He may yet suffer for his chivalric interference as many champions do. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. But certainly neither of these two vital enthusiasms touched the Victorian trouble. The ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the house, I made no doubt of soon finding out its inmates, if any of them were in the neighbourhood. I worked my way through the garden, knee-deep and rank with weed, for the purpose of reconnoitring the back-offices. I steered pretty cautiously past what memory, that great dealer in hyperbole, had hitherto generally contrived to picture as a huge lake—now, to my astonishment, dwindled into a duck-pond—but not without danger from its slippery margin. It still reposed under the shadow of the old cherry-tree, once the harbinger ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fragments of a poem by Barahona entitled Los Principios del mundo, and many graceful lyrics by the same writer have been published by Francisco Rodriguez Marin. Cervantes describes Barahona as "one of the best poets not only in Spain, but in the whole world"; this is friendly hyperbole. Nevertheless Barahona has high merits: poetic imagination, ingenious fancy, and an exceptional mastery of the methods transplanted to Spain from Italy. His Angelica has been reproduced in facsimile (New York, 1904) by Archer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 'the ne plus ultra of human misery!' She told the young bride (by way of a compliment) that she would not have got up in the middle of the night to be present at the marriage of any other friend on earth. This phrase might seem to most people only a pleasant hyperbole; but I am not quite sure that it was so intended. The fact is, she has seen so little of the world at any other hours than between noon and midnight, that she has a very obscure sense of other periods of daily time. She scarcely knows what morning is. Sunrise ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... to my incredulous ear. I had attributed his praises to the partiality of a lover's eye— having not the slightest suspicion that their object was possessed of such merits. No more should I question the justice of his admiration, nor wonder at its warmth. The rude hyperbole that had occasionally escaped him, when speaking of the "girl"—as he called her—no longer appeared extravagant. In truth, the charms of this magnificent maiden were worthy of metaphoric phrase. Perhaps, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... not been transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in his judgment of motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey, he shows little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole. The grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed, reconcile us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a prayer for the prosperity of the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the language, somewhat allied to hyperbole, even in its most ordinary expressions, now seemed almost too weak to afford Elspat the means of bringing out the splendid picture which she presented to her son of the land in which she proposed to him to take ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... dispute them in our days upon philosophical principles; they attribute them to a diseased imagination, the prejudices of education, and hidden springs of the constitution; they reduce the expressions of Scripture to hyperbole; they maintain that Jesus Christ condescended to the understanding of the people, and their prepossessions or prejudices; that demons being purely spiritual substances could not by themselves act immediately upon bodies; and that it is not ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... magnificent closing image and its truly AEschylean hyperbole, is not even suggested in Miss Brooke's version. It is, perhaps, the finest thing in the poem; but I hardly know any ballad finer as a piece of dramatic narrative; and the resonant verse, strongly rhymed (in the Gaelic assonances), ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... has indulged so freely in obvious hyperbole, and has made so very evident the bitter personal animosities which inspire many of his statements, that it has been a genuine surprise to his former associates and acquaintances that his book has been ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... answer acknowledges that their inference is correct. By another form of expression, similar in character to the "seven times in a day," he intimates that faith possesses an unlimited power of production in the department of doing. To intensify the result he employs a double hyperbole, as engineers employ two pairs of wheels to generate extreme rapidity of motion; the smallest spark of faith will overcome the greatest obstacles that may lie across a Christian's path. Again, the same idea which appeared before in Matt. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... not, however, give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is, that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him to magnify the ruin accomplished by the Conquistadores, he has exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of its towns, and the evidences of its civilization. It was on this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Edward; not so bad as that," replied Mrs. Markland. "You speak in hyperbole. This lovely place, which everywhere shows the impress of your hand, is not a prison. Call ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... of the Greek emperor, although he had been warned to beware of it, Louis VII. proceeded, at the head of his army, through Worms and Ratisbon, towards Constantinople. At Ratisbon he was met by a deputation from Manuel, bearing letters so full of hyperbole and flattery, that Louis is reported to have blushed when they were read to him by the Bishop of Langres. The object of the deputation was to obtain from the French king a promise to pass through the Grecian territories in a peaceable and friendly manner, and to yield to the Greek emperor any ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... itself for beauty. These"—she stripped the petals from a red rose in a vase near her, and tossed them in the air—"these are the real wealth of the world. And Brutus says I am stilted, exaggerated in my conversation, given to metaphor and hyperbole. That is because I dare to express what I feel, and since everywhere I see parables I ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... embodied were arbitrary and one-sided; but they represent a genuine endeavour to construct, if only for one class, a practicable code of conduct at a time when religion too often gloried in demanding the impossible. Chivalry degenerated into extravagance and conventional hyperbole; but at the worst it had the merit of investing human relationships and human occupations with an ideal significance. In particular it gave to women a more honourable position than they had occupied ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... debts," said Toombs on one occasion. "If she does not, I will pay them for her!" This piece of hyperbole was softened by the fact that on two occasions, when the State needed money to supply deficits, Toombs with other Georgians did come forward and lift the pressure. Sometimes he talked in a random way, but responsibility always sobered him. He was impatient of fraud ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... traveller going so far as to assert that they followed him from the water far into the woods, and bit at the spurs on his boots. But mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. Every night our camp was entertained with the hungry cry of wolves, the melancholy hooting of owls, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... autonomasia^, irony, figurativeness &c adj.; image, imagery; metalepsis^, type, anagoge^, simile, personification, prosopopoeia^, allegory, apologue^, parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. exaggeration, hyperbole &c 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514.1 V. employ a metaphor &c n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical^, typical, tralatitious^, parabolic, allegorical, allusive, anagogical^; ironical; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... can make the sun rise and set, morn and eve, with a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one here below, if we may be permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, can play the role of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... liken the wedding-ring to an ancient circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... engaged to assist him. Having settled on the exact spot, the swart Arabian descended, but signaled to return almost immediately, and was brought to the surface in open-eyed wonder. With all the hyperbole of Oriental imagination he swore positively to the finding of the chariot-wheels, and added the jewelry of Pharaoh's household. He was so earnest and so exact in the matter of the golden wheel, set with precious stones, that, though the captain dryly asked if he did not meet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The expression, "He bowed the Heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful manifestation of God's power to the writer of the Psalm in which the words occur. But the expression either has plain meaning, or it has no meaning. Understand by the term "Heavens" the compass of infinite space ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... only a story, children. If the man said there was a horse under him, it was a figure of speech, which we call hyperbole; he only meant to state in a funny way that ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... compass of a single germ, and from that germ reproduces the parent organism, is an hypothesis compared with which the creation of the world in its entirety six thousand years ago, including the fossils and remains of aeonian civilizations, is lucid and intelligible. This is no hyperbole. For if once we allow creation at all, the creation of the world at any stage of Evolution is just as conceivable as the creation of primordial atoms. If any living thing were now created (e.g., a grain of corn or ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... truly, in the phrase of the age, a "merchant adventurer," lucky indeed and enriched if, after facing the perils of navigation in strange waters, the possible hostility of native rulers, and the still greater danger from European rivals, half his ships returned. The last statement is no hyperbole; of 9 ships sent to the East from Amsterdam in 1598, four came back, and just half of the 22 sent out ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... all, a doctrine which will be attractive only to the lowest rank of workers, the lazy, and the inefficient. Therefore Socialist Communists endeavour to make Communism appear more palatable to the active and the efficient by the lavish use of poetry and hyperbole. For instance, we learn: "He who makes the canvas is as useful as he that paints the picture. He who cleanses the sewer and prevents disease is as useful as the physician who cures the malady after it has been contracted."[1055] To ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
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