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Hyperbole Quotes

Browse 69 quotes about Hyperbole.

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Hyperbole Quotes

“I’ve long had reservations about the emancipatory rhetoric of past eras, especially the kind that treats liberation as a one-time event or event horizon. Nostalgia for prior notions of liberation—many of which depend heavily upon mythologies of revelation, violent upheaval, revolutionary machismo, and teleological progress—often strikes me as not useful or worse in the face of certain present challenges, such as global warming.”

FreedomRevolutionNostalgiaMythologyLiberationRhetoricExaggerationEmancipationMachismoHyperbole
Book:On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint
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“I look at him and my body reacts in a way that it never has before, even in the throes of passion. I look at him and I start aching so deep inside it takes all I can to think, to breathe, to speak. He’s like the brightest flame and it takes everything in me to resist its call. I know that if I give in, I’ll get burned so deeply, there might be nothing left once I come out the other side. But, god, I want to step into that flame.”

MetaphorSexyLustFlamesSexy RomanceHyperboleFlames Quotes
Author:D.L. Hess
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“In many ways, the vampire was spared the gross suffering of the werewolf but that is only because they suffered in many other ways at the hands of the supernatural doctrines of religion. They, however, were connected to the hyperbolic voice crying in the wilderness.”

ReligionVampireSupernaturalHyperbole
Book:Revenants, Retroviruses, and Religion: How Viruses and Disease Created Cultural Mythology and Shaped Religious Perspectives
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“Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her!”

HumorWitHyperbole
Author:Sydney Smith
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“Coldmoon saw the early-morning glow of a café spilling onto the sidewalk and swerved toward it, not even bothering to ask his partner’s opinion. It was 6am and the café had apparently just opened. “My dear Coldmoon—“ began Pendergast. “If I don’t get some coffee,” said Coldmoon loudly, “I’m going to die.” “Very well,” said Pendergast. “I wouldn’t want another corpse on my hands.”

HumourCoffeeHyperbole
Book:Bloodless
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“She said, "I could kill him for what he did to you!" It was a curious phrase. I could kill... One I never used since I actually had killed before. I was a murderer, so for me it lost its hyperbolic quality. But like when you buy a car and then see that specific model everywhere, I noticed whenever anyone idly threw out murderous threats. And it was often. For me they stuck out like neon signsin otherwise dull common colloquialisms. People were always exclaiming, "I could kill you right now! or "I want to fucking kill her!" or the classic joke, "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you," and on and on and on. I heard something like that said at least once a week, and I nodded and smiled and understood, like a well-adjusted nonhomicidal person.”

HyperboleColloquialismsI Could Kill You
Book:Blood Sugar
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“Without in any way minimizing the role of violence in our lives, I am looking, simultaneously, at how a heightened rhetoric of threat that confuses doing nothing, normative conflict, and resistance with actual abuse, has produced a wide practice of over- stating harm.”

ConflictAbuseHyperbole
Book:Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair
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“Indeed ethnography and theory resemble nothing so much as the two arcs of a hyperbola, which cast their beams in opposite directions, lighting up the surfaces, respectively, of mind and world. They are back to back, and darkness reigns between them. But what if each arc were to reverse its orientation, so as to embrace the other in an encompassing, brightly illuminated ellipse? We would then have neither ethnography nor theory, nor even a compound of both. What we would have is an undivided, interstitial field of anthropology. If ethnographic theory is the hyperbola, anthropology is the ellipse. For ethnography, when it turns, is no longer ethnography but the educational correspondences of real life. And theory, when it turns, is no longer theory, but an imagination nourished by its observational engagements with the world. The rupture between reality and imagination—the one annexed to fact, the other to theory—has been the source of much havoc in the history of consciousness. It needs to be repaired. It is surely the task of anthropology, before all else, to repair it. In calling a halt to the proliferation of ethnography, I am not asking for more theory. My plea is for a return to anthropology.”

InspirationalScienceTheoryHyperboleEthnographySocial AnthropologyAnthropological MethodEllipseIngoldObservation With ParticipationTim Ingold
Author:Tim Ingold
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“Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding.”

HumorHyperbole
Book:Sense and Sensibility
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“In her book claiming that allegations of ritualistic abuse are mostly confabulations, La Fontaine’s (1998) comparison of social workers to ‘nazis’ shows the depth of feeling evident amongst many sceptics. However, this raises an important question: Why did academics and journalists feel so strongly about allegations of ritualistic abuse, to the point of pervasively misrepresenting the available evidence and treating women disclosing ritualistic abuse, and those workers who support them, with barely concealed contempt? It is of course true that there are fringe practitioners in the field of organised abuse, just as there are fringe practitioners in many other health-related fields. However, the contrast between the measured tone of the majority of therapists and social workers writing on ritualistic abuse, and the over-blown sensationalism of their critics, could not be starker. Indeed, Scott (2001) notes with irony that the writings of those who claimed that ‘satanic ritual abuse’ is a ‘moral panic’ had many of the features of a moral panic: scapegoating therapists, social workers and sexual abuse victims whilst warning of an impending social catastrophe brought on by an epidemic of false allegations of sexual abuse. It is perhaps unsurprising that social movements for people accused of sexual abuse would engage in such hyperbole, but why did this rhetoric find so many champions in academia and the media?”

MediaDenialBritainContemptChild AbuseSexual AbuseHypeTherapistsChild Sexual AbuseHysteriaMisinformationMass MediaRitual AbuseNazisSociety DenialEpidemicSatanic Ritual AbuseJournalistsAllegationsHyperboleDisinformationSensationalismReportScapegoatingOrganized AbuseRitualistic AbuseMoral PanicSatanic PanicFalse AllegationsSocial WorkersSkepticsConfabulationRitual Abuse MythScepticsJean La FontaineMisrepresentations
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of un-tethered government debt. I choose the words -“frightful storm' - deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are working right now so hard to correct.”

LongHardGovernmentFormTermDealsSituationStepsEconomicRight NowDistanceProsperityCreditDebtStormLong TermFederal GovernmentBrewingHyperboleEconomic ProsperityDebaclesGovernment Debt
Author:Richard W. Fisher
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“And lastly, Chairman Khrushchev has compared the United States to a worn-out runner living on its past performance, and stated that the Soviet Union would out-produce the United States by 1970. Without wishing to trade hyperbole with the Chairman, I do suggest that he reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he his caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.”

LongIdeasStatesPastWishUnitedUnited StatesProduceWallSkinsPerformancesTradeUnionsCaughtSovietWornRunnersTigersHuntersSoviet UnionChairmanLiving OnWorn OutHyperbole
Author:John F. Kennedy
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“Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.”

ArtLinesBillsHistoricalMetaphorTalesGoodsSnakesHandfulAngstCongregationForumsBeadsRosaryContemporary ArtSwallowingHyperboleQuestions AskedRosary Beads
Author:Abe Ajay
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“Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs.”

NeedsShouldLongEnoughAsksNamesCausesSimpleIssuesCallingArgumentGenderCensorshipSuggestionsHyperboleSensationalism
Author:Ronald Dworkin
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“Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.”

PeopleMenMatterFactsAbleYoungOrderFallImaginationFireStyleGeniusHighestMetaphorSatisfiedHeightReasonableComparisonCarrieSublimeBoundlessPrecisionMatter Of FactAntithesisHyperbole
Author:Jean de la Bruyere
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