Exaggeration
Charles Spurgeon's Illustration Collection [1]
In certain ancient Italian frescoes Mary Magdalene is drawn as a woman completely enveloped in her own hair, which reaches to her feet and entirely wraps up her body as in a seamless garment. These queer draughtsmen must needs exaggerate; granted that the woman had long hair, they must enfold her in it like a silkworm in its own silk. The practice survives among the tribe of talkers, everything with them is on the enlarged scale; a man with ordinary abilities is a prodigy, another with very pardonable faults is a monster, a third with a few failings is a disgrace to humanity. Truth is as comely and beautiful as a woman with flowing hair, but exaggeration is as grotesque and ugly as the Magdalene, all hair from head to foot.
Webster's Dictionary [2]
(1): ( n.) The act of heaping or piling up.
(2): ( n.) The act of exaggerating; the act of doing or representing in an excessive manner; a going beyond the bounds of truth reason, or justice; a hyperbolical representation; hyperbole; overstatement.
(3): ( n.) A representation of things beyond natural life, in expression, beauty, power, vigor.
