Wendell Johnson Quotes

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

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

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

We suffer quite as much from exaggerated, hysterical, and untruthful statements in the press as from any wrongdoing by businessmen or politicians.

I'm prone to hyperbole.

I don't believe in sensationalism, but I do believe in the sensational.

It's amazing how much things can get exaggerated.

Exaggeration is a prodigality of the judgment which shows the narrowness of one's knowledge or one's taste.

I went to UMass-Amherst and was like, 'I want to work in news, I want to be a journalist.' Then I got there and was like, 'what kind of crap is this?' They inflate everything. It will be like snowing outside, like just a little bit, and they are like 'Giant storm coming, batten down the hatches!' and I just didn't like that aspect of it.

Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.

It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.

I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak.

You know what's the greatest part of anything ever in the history of everything? Exaggeration. No, wait; it's correcting yourself. No, better yet, it's making lists.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it

Everything is 'colossalized' - events, fortunes, accidents, climate, conversation, ambitions - everything is in the extreme ... They can't even have a tram run off a line, which in England or France might kill one or two people, without its making a holocaust of half a street full. ... The thing which surprises me is they should still employ animals of normal size; one would expect to see elephants and mammoths drawing the hansoms and carts!

I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.

I tend to basically exaggerate in life, and in writing, it's fine to exaggerate. I really enjoy overstating for the purpose of getting a laugh. For another thing, writing is easier than digging ditches. Well, actually, that's an exaggeration. It isn't.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would've been like Woodstock.

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts.

Maybe he overreacted a bit." - "A bit? That's like Hitler saying, 'Oooh, I just meant to go for a little walk, but then I accidentally invaded Poland".

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!

I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.