Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing

People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.

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

Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness.

All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are.

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

Inflated descriptions by the pen or exaggerated illustrations by the pencil.

The only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement.

Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.

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.

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible.

Why obliterate the exceptional merely in order to make the outstanding look finer than it was?

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

Exaggeration is a branch of lying.

Things are rarely as exciting or dramatic as we make them out to be in the press.

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

People have different impressions of themselves, and where reality lies is somewhere in between.

I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.

I know a lot of people think, 'She's so glamorous.' But that's really not me at all.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

Dandyism is a lie which reveals the truth, and the truth is that we are what we pretend to be.

They talked about me as if I were Mother Teresa, and that every time I get a paycheck I go and send it to poor people and that we spend every free moment helping out people less fortunate. That was an enormous exaggeration.

The average person's ear weighs what you are, not what you were.