Humility is like underwear; essential, but indecent if it shows. — Helen Nielsen
The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. — August Wilson
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. — Aldous Huxley
Short Understatement Quotes
Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist. — Helena Rubinstein
To say that I am organized is an understatement, but my car tells a different story. — Emily Procter
We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement. — Jil Sander
Muffled lives explode in understatements. — Paul Gray
Who said that clothes make a statement? What an understatement that was. Clothes never shut up. — Susan Brownmiller
It isn't very serious, I have this tiny little tumor on the brain. — J. D. Salinger
Yeah, something was wrong. That was the understatement of the year. — Marie Lu
My modus operandi has always been understatement and that just doesn't really work in pop. — Ben Watt
The understatement is the English contribution to comedy. — Jim Davis
Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement. — George Steiner
Understatement Image Quotes
Overstatement Quotes
What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement. — Fred Allen
It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock. — Viktor Korchnoi
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers. — Julia Gillard
The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Reserve is strength; overstatement is weakness. No one cares to hear the singer's topmost notes when the voice is 'nigh onto breaking. — John F. Carlson
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. — E. B. White
"Simpler is always better" is an overstatement. — Elliott Sober
There's been this attempt to block Donald Trump, in primary candidates and Democrats, that - to try to make everything he says some sort of extreme overstatement. — Jeff Sessions
You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brody cannot believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical understatement tells Quint his assessment: You're gonna need a bigger boat. Awestruck, they all view the full-sized, massive shark circling the boat. Quint estimates it is 25 feet long: Three tons of him. — Roy Scheider
Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn't even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship. — William Lane Craig
My father was a really funny guy. He lived a good long life. And he was the reason I wanted to be funny and become a comedian and a comedy writer, so to say that he's somewhat of a mythic figure in my life would be an understatement. — Carol Leifer
Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician. — John Coltrane
To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties. — Paul Samuelson
To say that Sputnik gave rise to some concern in the United States would be the understatement of the century. The truth is that the US went apeshit — John Naughton
A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves. — J. B. Priestley
Cristal go by the cases, wait hold up that was racist
I would prefer the Aces, ain't no different when you taste it.
A 40 ounce to chase it, that's just an understatement. — ASAP Rocky
Billions of years ago God was creating universes and life; thousands of years ago he was creating angry floods, sin-saving human sacrifices and audible burning bushes. Today he occasionally appears on a piece of toast. To state that God has become reclusive over the years would be an overwhelming understatement. — Trevor Treharne
Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. — Susanna Kaysen
To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it. — David Gerrold
I'm pretty blessed when it comes to clear skin. I owe that to being Cape Verdian. My whole family has great skin. My grandfather is 80 but doesn't look a day over 50. And we all love the sun, too, so blessed is an understatement! — Amber Rose
I think time management and dedication are the main factors along with being an organized person. To say I was highly ambitious would be an understatement. I'm never one to sit around, I always have to be creating in various facets to keep myself entertained. — Ashley Purdy
It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction. — Antonin Scalia
To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying. — P. G. Wodehouse
In 2007, when I was governor of New York, I proposed that our state once again permit undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver's license. To say the proposal lit a firestorm in the political arena is an understatement. — Eliot Spitzer
Kenney knows two essential truths about melodrama: First that it is most powerful when combined with irony and understatement; and second that it is a salient feature of modern life. — Stefan Kanfer
... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited. — Evelyn Waugh
To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion. — Roger Ebert
Gillard is as likeable as Rudd is charmless. She is self-deprecating; he is ludicrously vainglorious. She is a mistress of understatement; he is a ranter. — Germaine Greer
I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement. — John Hurt
That transformation is to lose everything is an understatement so vast as to be without meaning. One has to lose everything, and one has to lose the one who has lost everything. — Steven Harrison
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice. — Emile M. Cioran
Emo means different things to different people. Actually, that's a massive understatement. Emo seems solely to mean different things to different people—Like pig latin or books by Thomas Pynchon, confusion is one of its hallmark traits. — Andy Greenwald
People used to say obvious things ironically or as a form of understatement, but in the last few decades they seem to say it with a sense of discovery, and it worries me. — Kevin Hearne
To say that the vote fraud conspiracy theorists are tilting at windmills is an understatement. They're using a legitimate public process to pursue an agenda that is, at best, grasping at straws and, at worse, partisan. — George Voinovich
Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom. — Susanna Kaysen
I'm a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires---outmatched is n understatement. — Patricia Briggs
Here`s what I`m curious about. For the president of Mexico, this man, Donald Trump, is, it`s probably not an understatement to say, despised by many Mexicans. — Steve Kornacki
Hours is an understatement. I honestly don't know how the director and editor decide each week what actually makes it on the air. There's of course director and cast commentary on each episode on the DVD. We had a blast recording that. — Joel McHale
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature. — Ernest Gaines
Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement — Bret Harte
Richard Stark writes a harsh and frightening story of criminal warfare and vengeance with economy, understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity-a remarkable addition to the list of the shockers that the French call roman noirs. — Anthony Boucher
The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization. — Sam Harris
In Conclusion
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