"Overstate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contempt. The country is alive to the evil and ought to insist that it shall be promptly dealt with. The task is not an agreeable one. Those who have anything personally to gain or to lose in political life will naturally shrink from it. At the same time, nothing is worse than to overstate the case, and nothing easier than to create an atmosphere of suspicion without definite evidence. Directly the word "purity" is mentioned in any sense, there is a tendency to put forward something startling, "to pander to the lust for the lurid." It would be an excellent thing to put a ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... heat of charity and a high moral tone. Without comment, then, from me, I present to you in America, kind readers, Saint Patrick, the Apostle and Patron of Ireland and the Irish race, as I received him from my ancestors. I neither overstate, nor under-estimate, nor withheld anything. Judge ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... employing you. I had intended to employ you no further, sir—at least for the present; but, sir, this morning I received a letter from my valued friend in the country, in which he speaks in terms of strong admiration (I don't overstate) of your German acquirements. Sir, he says that it would be a thousand pities if your knowledge of the German language should be lost to the world, or even permitted to sleep, and he entreats me to think of some plan by which it may be turned to account. Sir, I am at ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... perhaps real-estate advertisements, I could find absolutely nothing that on the face of it seemed fraudulent, and very little that was misleading. The advertisers have at last come to realize that for the long run, whatever the rule may be for the short run, it does not pay to overstate the qualities of their merchandise. You can now order your purchases by mail from the advertising pages of any reputable publication about as safely as over the counter of a store. At all events the phenomenal growth of the mail-order houses and their sales through advertising, ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... and impressive because his own judgment was against the measure, and he allowed himself to be controlled by the fear that another might usurp the place in Southern regard so long held by himself. In parliamentary discussion it is not easy to overstate the power of Mr. Douglas. Indeed, it would be difficult to name his superior. He did not attain the dignity of Webster's stately style. He was not gifted with the fire that burned through Clay's impulsive ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... ecclesiastical writers present us with a sad tale of tortures and of death borne by those who refused to renounce their faith,—a tale which is only made less sad by the doubt how far the writers' feelings may have misled their judgment, and made them overstate the numbers. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... You overstate my strength, placing it at seven thousand effective, when it was but six. The nominal strength of my command ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... experience. What is there similar to the conditions of everyday life which will generate difficulties? Almost everything testifies to the great premium put upon listening, reading, and the reproduction of what is told and read. It is hardly possible to overstate the contrast between such conditions and the situations of active contact with things and persons in the home, on the playground, in fulfilling of ordinary responsibilities of life. Much of it is not even comparable with the questions which may arise in ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... tendency for even the best school records to understate the full situation regarding failure, while there is no corresponding tendency to overstate or to record failures not made. Not infrequently the pupils who drop out after previously failing may receive no mark or an incomplete one for the last semester in school. Although a portion or all of such ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... comfortless room in which Alice was confined, the miserable fare given her, and how she would be exposed to the leers and low remarks of the soldiers. She had already suffered these things, and now that she could no longer have any protection, what was to become of her? He did not attempt to overstate the case; but presented it with a blunt sincerity which made a powerfully ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to suggest a new means of dealing with the problem of vocal management, it is well to ascertain how this problem is treated in modern methods of instruction. It would not be easy to overstate the importance assigned to the matter of tone-production in all modern systems of Voice Culture. The scientific study of the voice has dealt exclusively with this subject. A new science has resulted, commonly ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... brothers cannot fail you." It was in that belief that she acted, and before long the Nursing Corps might with equal justice have been called The Women Citizens. It became a great league of domestic patriots, and it would not be easy to overstate the value of its influence upon the rising ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... of your facts. Never let your opponents catch you tripping in accuracy of statement. If you make one serious error, your enemies will turn it against you to the utmost. Better understate facts than overstate them. This shrewd old world quickly recognizes the careful, conservative man whose testimony is so true and so rock-founded that no assaults can shake it. Legislators are quick to rely on the words and opinions ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... truest and easiest way of getting to like a man is to do him a service; that makes you wish him well forever afterwards. I should have honored and esteemed the Count Rossano if he had not been his daughter's father. As it was, I had an affection for him which it would not be easy for me to overstate. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... that suffered by contrast with the pleasure of the boy and Kenby in meeting. There was a certain question in the attitude of Mrs. Adding till March helped Kenby to account for his presence; then she relaxed in an effect of security so tacit that words overstate it, and began to make ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... those southwestern countries—Devonshire, Dorset, and Somerset—which so long were foremost in maritime enterprise; one-sixth to other parts of England. I would not insist upon the exactness of such figures, in a matter where only a rough approximation is possible; but I do not think they overstate the East Anglian preponderance. It was not by accident that the earliest counties of Massachusetts were called Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, or that Boston in Lincolnshire gave its name to the chief city of New England. The native ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske |
