Understatement quotes:

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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
Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist. -- Helena Rubinstein
A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations. -- Russell Page
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
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
Muffled lives explode in understatements. -- Paul Gray
To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion. -- Roger Ebert
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness. -- Eric Hoffer
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
The understatement is the English contribution to comedy. -- Jim Davis
To ask if I am mischievous is the understatement of all time. -- Malcolm Gets
To say that my dad pushed me is an understatement. I was never naturally drawn to football. -- Thierry Henry
I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement. -- Martin Parr
I was, in the 1960s, in a marriage. To use the word 'bad' would be perhaps the understatement of the year. It was dreadful. -- Sherwin B. Nuland
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
When you hear that China is overcrowded, that's an understatement. I was shocked at the number of people. Even in the rural areas. I was also shocked at the poverty and at the living conditions. -- Rosemary Mahoney
In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke. -- Rabih Alameddine
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
However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow. -- Walter Kirn
I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group. -- Patrick Rothfuss
It's not an understatement to say that I owe everything as an actor to 'Merlin.' It was pretty much my first job, and I didn't know what I was doing for many years on it. It wasn't until the third and fourth series - the fourth series especially - that I really found my feet with the character, and as an actress. -- Katie McGrath
The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead. -- George Mikes
Yeah, something was wrong. That was the understatement of the year. -- Marie Lu
Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement. -- George Steiner
The way you walk is slash and burn.Like understatement's now a crime. -- Justin Quinn
I'm a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires---outmatched is n understatement. -- Patricia Briggs
My modus operandi has always been understatement and that just doesn't really work in pop. -- Ben Watt
Who said that clothes make a statement? What an understatement that was. Clothes never shut up. -- Susan Brownmiller
Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom. -- Susanna Kaysen
You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever knownâ??and even that is an understatement. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Baikida Carroll, whose balance of bravada and tenderness, facility and understatement mark him as a player to be reckoned with. -- Jon Pareles
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice. -- Emile M. Cioran
To say she was attractive would be an understatement. Calling her 'attractive' would be like calling the Taj Mahal a marble grave. -- Mallika Nawal
Say no more, if your mind has conceived what you see as insanely gorgeous; what you might utter in words after maybe an understatement. -- Wayne Chirisa
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
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
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
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
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

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