Mark Twain Quotes

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

I overdramatize.

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

I live in a constant state of hyperbole.

The speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

Reality bears no relationship to the super-heated rhetoric.

Never a man to understate matters

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

Hyperbole engaged in consciously to achieve a desired effect can be, as we have noted, a useful rhetorical tool. Indeed, its use in this manner is sometimes called "exaggeration in the service of truth." However, there's much to be said for restraint of tongue and pen, and restraint refers not only to what we say but also to how we say it. It is possible, believe it or not, to be emphatic without indulging in overstatement; it is possible to be forceful without exaggerating.

Hyperbole is not easily dealt with. Usually, it collapses under its own weight.

It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning.

The rattling thunderbolt hath but his clap, the lightning but his flash, and as they both come in a moment, so do they both end in a minute.

If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

I like storms. I like thunder and lightning. What I do during a storm is shag my girlfriend and pretend that we're taking part in the conception of the Antichrist.

Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.

Now and then there comes a crash of thunder in a storm, and we look up with amazement when he sets the heavens on a blaze with his lightning.

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.

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.

I escaped the Thunder, and fell into the Lightning.

Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes... The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling.

A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull.

No rain but thunder, and the sound of giants.

I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.