Understatement Quotes:

Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement.

- George Steiner

source: George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.153, Oxford University Press on Demand

topic: Language, Understatement

Yeah, something was wrong. That was the understatement of the year.

- Marie Lu

topic: Years, Yeah, Understatement

Art begins when an observer's sensibilities engage with the understatements of a calculating craftsman.

- Sara Genn

topic: Art, Craftsman, Understatement

My modus operandi has always been understatement and that just doesn't really work in pop.

- Ben Watt

source: Source: thequietus.com

topic: Modus Operandi, Pops, Understatement

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

topic: Lost Everything, Transformation, Understatement

Muffled lives explode in understatements.

- Paul Gray

topic: Understatement

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

- Russell Page

source: Russell Page (2010). “The Education of a Gardener”, p.84, Random House

topic: Art, Eye, Imagination, Understatement, Discerning

Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist.

- Helena Rubinstein

topic: Artist, Makeup, Sixteen, Makeup Artist, Artificial Light

To say that I am organized is an understatement, but my car tells a different story.

- Emily Procter

topic: Car, Different, Stories, Understatement

We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement.

- Jil Sander

topic: Cutting, Air, Color, Understatement

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

topic: Jesus, Would Be, Maps, Understatement

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

topic: Father, Long, Guy, Funny Guy, Good Long

It isn't very serious, I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.

- J. D. Salinger

source: J.D. Salinger (1951). “The Catcher in the Rye”

topic: Brain, Littles, Tiny, Understatement

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Love, Beautiful, Wedding, Beautiful Person, Understatement

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

topic: Music, Men, Knowing, Understatement

The understatement is the English contribution to comedy.

- Jim Davis

topic: Understatement

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

topic: Self, Mistress, Likeable, Understatement

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

topic: Powerful, Two, Essentials, Understatement

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

topic: Self, Luxury, Clothes, Luxury Items, Understatement

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

topic: New York, Political, Arena, Undocumented Immigrants, Understatement

... 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

topic: Self, Denial, Hardship, Understatement

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

- Susanna Kaysen

topic: Boredom, Despair, Emptiness, Desolation, Understatement

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

source: David Gerrold (2002). “The Martian Child: A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son”, p.113, Forge Books

topic: Crazy, Moving, Home, Crazy Person, Understatement

Who said that clothes make a statement? What an understatement that was. Clothes never shut up.

- Susan Brownmiller

source: Susan Brownmiller (2013). “Femininity”, p.86, Open Road Media

topic: Clothes, Shut Up, Said, Understatement

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

source: Source: marleymagazine.com

topic: Understatement

The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.

- James Gleick

topic: Book, Would Be, Culture, Understatement

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

source: Bret Harte (2001). “The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings”, p.218, Penguin

topic: Miracle, Quality, Stories, Concise, Understatement

To say I live a cursed life is an understatement. I have to get up every day and work with people who are not as successful as me nor will they ever be as successful as me. Nobody knows the struggles I go through.

- Zach Braff

topic: Struggle, Successful, People, Understatement

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

source: "Bells Lose High Court Ruling" by Joanna Glasner, www.wired.com. January 25, 1999.

topic: Self, Important, Would Be, Telecommunications, Understatement

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

topic: School, Men, Style, Understatement, Old English

It's no understatement that the church has done a poor job in teaching our young people that reason and faith are not opposites, and that atheists are far from being on the side of reason. You can find on our website a chart which I use to demonstrate the various worldviews work out, and which one, Christianity, is rational. Many kids, however, who grow up huddled in a Christian environment find themselves in the university setting completely unequipped to defend the rationality of the Christian faith against the secular humanist worldview so prevalent on college campuses.

- Charles Colson

topic: Christian, Atheist, Jobs, College Campus, Understatement

The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.

- George Mikes

source: George Mikes (1973). “How to be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils”, Penguin UK

topic: Humorous, Soul, England, Understatement

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

source: Andy Greenwald (2003). “Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo”, p.1, Macmillan

topic: Emo, Latin, Book, Understatement

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

topic: New York, Heaven, Dying, Billing, Understatement

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

topic: Hip Hop, Waiting, Different, Understatement

Then Drew shuffles into the dining hall. I drop my toast, and my mouth drifts open. Calling him “bruised” would be an understatement. His face is swollen and purple. He has a split lip and a cut running through his eyebrow. He keeps his eyes down on the way to his table, not even lifting them to look at me. I glance across the room at Four. He wears the satisfied smile I wish I had on.

- Veronica Roth

topic: Running, Eye, Cutting, Understatement, Shuffle

I'm a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires---outmatched is n understatement.

- Patricia Briggs

source: Patricia Briggs (2010). “Silver Borne: Mercy Thompson”, p.10, Hachette UK

topic: Vampire, World, Coyotes, Shapeshifters, Understatement

She reached up and curled her fingers into mine. “He should take you to dinner.” To say that the mere thought horrified me would have been a grievous understatement. I threw up a little in my mouth then swallowed hard. I told Taft when I recovered, “Just please, for the love of God, find a girl good enough to take home to your mother. And do it soon.” “And stop dating skanks.

- Darynda Jones

topic: Girl, Mother, Home, Skanks, Taft

If you want to call yourself my friend, you should know that position comes with boundaries." Sabine frowned. "I'm no good with boundaries." "Yes, and the ocean is damp. Can we be done with the understatements now?

- Rachel Vincent

source: "Before I Wake". Book by Rachel Vincent, June 26, 2012.

topic: Ocean, Want, Done, Damp, Kaylee

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

source: Kevin Hearne (2014). “The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle: Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Tricked, Trapped, Hunted”, p.274, Del Rey

topic: Discovery, Worry, People, Understatement

I'm glad you're still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn't have any silver. She'd have staked you right and proper otherwise. She has a tendency to shrivel someone first and then introduce herself afterwards." "That's uncalled for!" I said, insulted at the suggestion that I was homicidal. "Right." Bones let that go. "Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I've been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I've said is... an understatement.

- Jeaniene Frost

topic: Cat, Firsts, Suggestions, Spades, Understatement

Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I’ve been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I’ve said is…an understatement.

- Jeaniene Frost

topic: Cat, Kitten, Spades, Understatement

It is an understatement to say that the time has arrived for a serious and open international dialogue regarding the possibility of future interplanetary relations. In no other area of human experience has so much evidence existed for so long, and yet been attended by such a paucity of serious research and analysis - at least in the civilian domain. While the subject matter of UFOs itself is extraordinary, it is the absence of a serious human response to it that is most extraordinary.

- Steven M. Greer

topic: Long, Analysis, Research, Understatement

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

source: John Naughton (2015). “A Brief History of the Future”, p.83, Hachette UK

topic: United States, Would Be, Sputnik, Understatement

Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon.

- Camille Paglia

topic: Eye, Space, Intuition, Pisces, Film History

Baikida Carroll, whose balance of bravada and tenderness, facility and understatement mark him as a player to be reckoned with.

- Jon Pareles

topic: Player, Balance, Mark, Understatement

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

topic: Believe, Assessment, Views, Understatement, Awestruck

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

topic: Agendas, Vote, Conspiracy, Understatement

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

- Ernest Gaines

source: Ernest J. Gaines (2007). “Mozart and Leadbelly”, p.27, Vintage

topic: Reading, Writing, People, Lester Young, Reading Novels

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

source: "Tribute talks to Spy Kids star Joel McHale". Interview with Alexandra Heilbron, www.tribute.ca. August 8, 2011.

topic: Understatement

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

topic: Men, President, Mexico, Understatement

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

source: "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Real, School, Catholic, Preps, Understatement