[74]
I shrink from recording the faults to which the lack
of this sense of proportion has given rise, more
especially as they are so well known and obvious.
It is enough to say that hyperbole lies, though
without any intention to deceive. We must therefore be all the more careful to consider how far we
may go in exaggerating facts which our audience
may refuse to believe. Again, hyperbole will often
cause a laugh. If that was what the orator desired,
[p. 345]
we may give him credit for wit; otherwise we can
only call him a fool.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.