But you see, sir, how you degrade better men to your own level; and it is needful that those who are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the devil's advocate, should understated your letter to have been penned in a house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and the comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yours which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had, and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even your pen perhaps would have been stayed.英文原著 · 《Father Damien》
You understate the strength of my enemy, putting Forrest's force at four thousand. On our return to Nashville, you stated it, in General Grant's presence, to have been but twenty-five hundred. Before and during my movement I positively knew Forrest's strength to be full six thousand, and he has since told me so himself.英文原著 · 《Memoirs of General William T. Sherman-1》
But don't swing a gun on us with a threat. Alban was lucky to say it. He got the reserve, the restraint, the commonplace understatement that England affects, into the sentence. It was a piece of good fortune to catch the thing like that. "The monument is tremendous. One can't avoid it. It's always before the eye here, like the White Horse of Alfred on the chalk hill in Berkshire. All the roads pass it through this countryside.英文原著 · 《The Sleuth of St. James Street》
[501] An echo of Job 39:13-16. [502] The thicket denizens mentioned above. [503] Cf. 143:10. [504] Something of an understatement! It is interesting to note that Augustine devotes more time and space to these opening verses of Genesis than to any other passage in the entire Bible -- and he never commented on the _full_ text of Genesis. Karl Barth's 274 pages devoted to Gen., chs. 1;2, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, I, pp.英文原著 · 《confessions and enchiridion》
By acting with purpose and understatement, I had created a more just environment, which is what I am asking of all of you.美剧 · 《Billions》