Quotes about exaggeration
A collection of quotes on the topic of exaggeration, evening, doing, people.
Quotes about exaggeration

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada
Teu exagera ou exclui.
Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és
No mínimo que fazes.
Assim em cada lago a lua toda
Brilha, porque alta vive.
Ricardo Reis (heteronym), Ode (14 February 1933), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa
Speech in Brooklyn, New York (29 March 1994) quoted in Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present (2002) by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer

Sir Dinshaw Wacha in Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji: "The Grand Old Man of India"
About Dadabhai

“Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.”

“It is difficult to exaggerate the power of habit.”
Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

As quoted in Sathyam Sivam Sundaram (The Life Story of Sathya Sai Baba) by N. Kasturi, Ch. XXVI : Holy Joy http://www.ineval.org/sai/Teachings/SathyamSivamSundaram/s1026.html

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Variant: The report of my death was an exaggeration.

“Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.”

“I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.”

“I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.”
Source: Roughing It

"The Origins and Effects of Our Morals: A Problem for Science", in The Essence of Hayek (1984)
1980s and later

Hat matt nicht die Augen, um sich sie auszureißen und das Herz zum gleichen Zweck? Dabei ist es ja nicht so schlimm, das ist Übertreibung und Lüge, alles ist Übertreibung, nur die Sehnsucht ist wahr, die kann man nicht übertreiben. Aber selbst die Wahrheit der Sehnsucht ist nicht so sehr ihre Wahrheit, als vielmehr der Ausdruck der Lüge alles übrigen sonst. Es klingt verdreht, aber es ist so.
Auch ist es vielleicht nicht eigentlich Liebe wenn ich sage, daß Du mir das Liebste bist; Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle.
Letter to Milena Jesenská (14 September 1920) http://www.abyssal.de/zitate/liebe.htm
Variant translations:
In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.
Letters to Milena (1952)

Cardinal Winning Lecture (February 2, 2008)

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 312
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long
The very search for the improvement of the body (and the concomitant “happiness” of the psyche) must lead to further discontent.
page 39.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

From a note Twain wrote in London on May 31, 1897 to reporter Frank Marshall White: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Lighting Out For the Territory : Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 134 http://books.google.com/books?id=ms3tce7BgJsC&lpg=PA134&vq=%22the%20report%20of%20my%20death%20was%20an%20exaggeration%22&pg=PA134. (The original note is the Papers of Mark Twain, Accession #6314, etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu00005.xml, in Box 1.)
White subsequently reported this in "Mark Twain Amused," New York Journal, 2 June 1897. White also recounts the incident in "Mark Twain as a Newspaper Reporter," The Outlook, Vol. 96, 24 December 1910
"Chapters from My Autobiography", The North American Review, 21 September 1906, p. 160. Mark Twain
Misquote: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
This paraphrase or misquote may be more popular than the original.
Variant: I said - 'Say the report is greatly exaggerated'.

Diary-note of Boudin, 3 December, 1856; as cited in the description of his painting 'Sky, Setting Sun, Bushes in Foreground' http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene-boudin/boudin-skies, by the Muma-museum, Le Havre
A quote from Boudin's personal diary sheds remarkable light on a small group of his sky studies
1850s - 1870s

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 316
Non-Fiction, Letters

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Source: A Passage to India (1924), Ch. 14
Context: Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself", or, “I am horrified,” we are insincere.

Letter to August Derleth (21 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 220
Non-Fiction, Letters, to August Derleth
Context: Time, space, and natural law hold for me suggestions of intolerable bondage, and I can form no picture of emotional satisfaction which does not involve their defeat—especially the defeat of time, so that one may merge oneself with the whole historic stream and be wholly emancipated from the transient and the ephemeral. Yet I can assure you that this point of view is joined to one of the plainest, naivest, and most unobtrusively old-fashioned of personalities—a retiring old hermit and ascetic who does not even know what your contemporary round of activities and "parties" is like, and who during the coming winter will probably not address two consecutive sentences to any living person—tradesmen apart—save a pair of elderly aunts! Some people—a very few, perhaps—are naturally cosmic in outlook, just as others are naturally 'of and for the earth'. I am myself less exclusively cosmic than Klarkash-Ton and Wandrei... I begin with the individual and the soil and think outward—appreciating the sensation of spatial and temporal liberation only when I can scale it against the known terrestrial scene. They, on the other hand, are able to think of wholly non-human abysses of ultimate space—without reference-points—as realities neither irrelevant nor less significant than immediate human life. With me, the very quality of being cosmically sensitive breeds an exaggerated attachment to the familiar and the immediate—Old Providence, the woods and hills, the ancient ways and thoughts of New England—whilst with them it seems to have the opposite effect of alienating them from immediate anchorages. They despise the immediate as trivial; I know that it is trivial, but cherish rather than despise it—because everything, including infinity itself, is trivial. In reality I am the profoundest cynic of them all, for I recognize no absolute values whatever.

“He exaggerates the sovereign majesty of Christ in order to make him out quite unique”
Dicturi ergo sunt: Dicis mihi quod resurrexerit Christus, et inde speras resurrectionem mortuorum; sed Christo licuit resurgere a mortuis. Et incipit iam laudare Christum, non ut illi det honorem, sed ut tibi faciat desperationem. Serpentis astuta pernicies, ut laude Christi te avertat a Christo, dolose praedicat quem vituperare non audet. Exaggerat maiestatem illius, ut singularem faciat, ne tu speres tale aliquid, quale in illo resurgente monstratum est. Et quasi religiosior apparet erga Christum, cum dicit: Ecce qui se audet comparare Christo, ut quia resurrexit Christus, et se resurrecturum putet. Noli perturbari perversa laude Imperatoris tui; hostiles insidiae te perturbant, sed Christi humilitas et humanitas te consolatur. Ille praedicat quantum erectus sit Christus a te: Christus autem dicit quantum descendit ad te.
Sermon 361 On the Resurrection of the Dead; 15 How to answer their exaggerated praise of Christ and their disparaging of Christians.
English translation from: Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century, III/10, Sermons 341-400 (on liturgical seasons), Edmund Hill, tr., John E. Rotelle, ed., New City Press, 1995, , pp. 234-235. https://books.google.ca/books?id=iE30Zob4v98C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=exaggerated&f=false
Sermons
Context: So they [the pagans] are going to say, “You tell me that Christ has risen again, and from that you hope for the resurrection of the dead; but Christ was in a position to rise from the dead.” And now he begins to praise Christ, not in order to do him honor, but to make you despair. It is the deadly cunning of the serpent, to turn you away from Christ by praising Christ, to extol deceitfully the one he doesn’t dare to disparage.
He exaggerates the sovereign majesty of Christ in order to make him out quite unique, to stop you hoping for anything like what was demonstrated in his rising again. And he seems, apparently, to be all the more religiously respectful of Christ, when he says, “Look at the person who dares compare himself to Christ, so that just because Christ rose again, he can imagine that he's going to rise again too!” Don't let this perverse praise of your emperor disturb you. The insidious tricks of the enemy may disturb you, but the humility and humanity of Christ should console you. This man emphasizes how high above you Christ has been lifted up; Christ, though, says how low he came down to you.

“[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.”
Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (2 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 104

“Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.”
Source: The Fountainhead
Source: Black Blood
Source: Burn for Me

Speech http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/36-fj-related/geert-wilders/7981-geert-wilders-speech-danish-free-press-society-copenhagen-2-11-2014.html at the 10 years memorial conference for Theo Van Gogh arranged by the Danish Free Press Society (Copenhagen, 2 November 2014); Video: Geert Wilders speaks in the Danish Parliament Building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgpzi0PW0w
2010s

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 18 (p. 298)

Present State of the Law (February 7, 1828).
Variant: In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

Hillary Clinton (1975) State of Arkansas V. Thomas Alfred Taylor affidavit as quoted in Did Hillary Clinton betray a criminal client? http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/opinion/callan-hillary-clinton/ CNN (2014/07/01).
1970s
Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 62.
Cap 3 "Under the Japanese Heel"

(Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296
Early career years (1898–1929)
Does quantum mechanics carry the seeds of its own destruction? (1991)

“Never exaggerate, but express your feelings with moderation.”
Maxim 13, p. 256
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963)
"An Open Letter to Lydia Morrow" Pro Veritate, V.15, No. 4 (September 1976) http://disa.nu.ac.za/articledisplaypage.asp?filename=PVSep76&articletitle=An+open+letter+to+Lydia+Morrow+from+Colin+Winter%2C+Bishop+of+Damaraland+in+exile+++++++++&searchtype=browse. Pro Veritate http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourpvexpand.htm was a Christian monthly journal published in South Africa from 1962 to 1977. Lydia Morrow was the small daughter of Winter's friends and associates, Edward and Laureen Morrow.

Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 1): Daniel Kahneman, bloomberg.com, 24 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-24/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-1-daniel-kahneman.html,
"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83
Plato's Republic: A Study (2005), Introduction

As quoted in Saturday Review (25 August 1962)
Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935)
Variant: People often ask me, 'Will, where do you get your jokes?' I just tell 'em, 'Well, I watch the government and report the facts, that is all I do, and I don't even find it necessary to exaggerate.
Variant: I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Quote in Chagall's letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 73
1920's

The influence of Islam on medieval Europe, Edinburgh University Press, 1973, p. 84

“Exaggeration of confidence,” he said, “is a fault in people who don’t know their business.”
This is an early statement of what would come to be known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Source: Tactics of Mistake (1971), Chapter 20 (p. 315).

“He is exaggerating, for sure—130 mph approaches the high end for the likes of Sampras.”
Sports Illustrated writer Ian Thomsen in response to Richard Williams asserting that Venus could hit a 130 mph serve. Her record is 129 mph, the second fastest female speed of all time.
Thomsen, Ian (April 6, 1998), "Changing of the guard". Sports Illustrated. 88 (14):64
About

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)
p. 16

Sugar Ray Leonard on his first fight with Roberto Duran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDYnO9gGwIQ&feature=related

Letter to his parents regarding World War II (April 25, 1941)

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/may/15/papers-moved-for-1 in the House of Commons (15 May 1860) on the illegal prize-fight between Tom Sayers and J. C. Heenan. The Radical MP Colonel Dickson replied that although "He sat on a different side of the House from the noble Lord, and did not often find himself in the same lobby with him on a division; but he would say for the noble Viscount, that if he had one attribute more than another which endeared him to his countrymen it was his thoroughly English character and his love for every manly sport". Palmerston was rumoured to have attended the fight and he contributed the first guinea to the collection for Sayers in the House of Commons.
1860s

Foreword of "Man and his Gods" by Homer W. Smith
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

Machismo Underpins War and Tranny http://www.petertatchell.net/masculinity/machismo-underpins-war-and-tyranny.htm, Official Website