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More "Ennoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regardless of temporary gains, whether of money or praise, fixing his attention solely upon what is intrinsically interesting and permanent, and finding his happiness in an entire devotion of himself to such pursuits as shall most ennoble human nature. We have not yet seen enough of this in modern times; and never was there a period in society when such examples were likely to do more good than at present. The industry and love of truth which distinguish Sir Joshua's mind ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... only since the introduction of Christianity, which derives all evil as well as good from within, he has come to be regarded less as an external than an internal reality, and is identified with the ascendency in the human heart of passions native to it, which when subject ennoble it, but when supreme debase it. He is properly the spirit that deceives man, and decoys him to his eternal ruin from truth ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... existence. The only pleasure. Her love did not deserve any other name. In that ardent, despotic, restless spirit there had never been a question of tenderness. She was completely ignorant of the delicious, poetic thoughts that ennoble a passion and make it pardonable. Her life had been passed in insane excitement, tormented by the idea of being happy at all costs. She had lived for the last seven years under the sway of her licentious, insatiable passion. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... crowned hero craving for a new world, it becomes blind to all else. Moral death falls on it; and any sin looks sweet that takes it nearer to its goal. It is a passion that generates at once all the loftiest and all the vilest things, which between them ennoble and corrupt the world—even as heat generates at once the harvest and the maggot, the purpling vine and the lice that devour it. It is a passion without which the world would decay in darkness, as it would do without heat, yet to which, as to heat, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly, that she was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during the course of the investigation. This new honor had come to him through the mail; apparently she had decided to ennoble some of her friends ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... as a festival, my hearer? I can tell you why you may. If you will receive it, the angel's message is to you personally; unto you is born a Saviour who will forgive your past sin, and shield you from its consequences,—who will ennoble your future life, and sustain and comfort you under the inevitable sorrow and suffering awaiting,—and who will receive you into an eternal and a happy home at the end of your brief sojourn here. May not ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... of catching slaves was regarded as one of the lowest grades of scoundrelism. Now, great pains are taken by our gentlemen of property and standing to ennoble it; and men of eminence in the legal profession are stooping to take the wages of iniquity, and lending themselves to consign to the horrors of American slavery men whom they know to be innocent of crime. Nay, we have seen in New York a committee of gentlemen actually raising money by voluntary ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... turn to her prose. There she shows strength of character and goodness of heart. One aim, never lost sight of, is perceptible through all, and gives unity to the whole; this is a fervent desire to ennoble human life; consequently her works will long have influence, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... are the true life-blood of the country to which they belong. They elevate and uphold it, fortify and ennoble it, and shed a glory over it by the example of life and character which they have bequeathed. "The names and memories of great men," says an able writer, "are the dowry of a nation. Widowhood, overthrow, desertion, even slavery cannot take away from her this sacred inheritance ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... contracted, when there is within his reach the life that is full and complete—the Larger Life? Why will he be content with the pleasures of the body and the joys of the mind when he can have added to them the delights of the spirit? How can he delay acceptance of Christ's offer to ennoble that which he has, and to add to it the things that are highest and best and most enduring? This is the life that Christ brought to light when He came that men might have life and have ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... just into the law of justice, and to insist that God shall adopt that as His law; to measure off something with our own little tape-line, and call it God's love of justice. Continually we seek to ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the measure of the man, and determines the quality of his influence. He was the average clubman plus genius and a style. And, if there is any truth in the theory that it is the function of art not to degrade but to ennoble—not to dishearten but to encourage—not to deal with things ugly and paltry and mean but with great things and beautiful and lofty—then, it is argued, his example is one to depreciate and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... humble, and the earthly-minded heavenly. It draws all who truly receive it, by a gradual but certain process, into a likeness to Christ, which is the sum of all goodness. In proportion also as the principles of the gospel gain ground in any community, they ennoble it, purify it, and inspire it with the spirit of truth and justice. Very imperfectly is our country pervaded by this good leaven. Yet it is this, small as is its measure, which makes the difference between the state of society here at home and in India or China. Many thousands who do not personally ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... hand, something had been done to teach the devotees of Xanthos toleration and a spirit of alms. The Bishop now turned his attention towards Melanthos more particularly what could he do to ennoble the aims and methods of his clients? He had made a journey to England and back not long before the blessing of the transepts. He regretted leaving his flock at the time. Yet certain observations he had made just ere he started gave him much food for thought on the voyage. And ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... childhood comes to the surface, and you see what the boy is meant to be always. Look at the jerkiness of the conceited man. Look at the quiet fluency of motion in the modest man. Look how anger itself which forgets self, which is unhating and righteous, will elevate the carriage and ennoble ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... past; on the good, honest advice that Vesta Philbrook had given him. Blood was blood, after all. If the source of it was base, it was too much to hope that a little removal, a little dilution, would ennoble it. She had lived there all her life the associate of thieves and rascals; her way of looking on men and property must naturally be that of the depredator, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... the home-silence; they mould the young life and stamp their impress upon it. How important then that all such objects should be chosen, not only as treasures of artistic beauty, but for their power to elevate and ennoble character. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in that air she had strengthened the delicate health of her childhood. Her elastic step—her eyes full of sweetness and light—her bloom, at once soft and luxuriant—all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could ennoble the passions of the South with the purity and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... troubles that occupied every sleeping and waking thought of Hankinson Judson Terwilliger. His mind was now set upon the hardest problem it had ever had to cope with, that problem being how to so ennoble the spectre cook of Bangletop that she might outrank the ancestors of his landlord in the other world—the shady world, he called it. The living cook had been induced to remain partly by threats and partly by promises ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... with tragic dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakespeare's works thinking to improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is radically odious, and to endeavor in any manner to ennoble it, is to violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of demons ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... of the average teacher. It takes time to accomplish changes in a conservative community, and the new education will be successful only as the new teacher becomes a comparative fixture. To build oneself into the life of a rural community as does the physician, and to ennoble it with new ideas and higher ideals, is a missionary service that can hardly be surpassed at the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... biography show that beautiful women, if true, gentle, and unselfish, have great power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men. Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion of the perfect life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility, even that which a man achieves or buys; but surely, if one receives ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... profession was ostensibly established; who would speak truth in the Courts of Law, the House of Legislature, and the salons of Society; who would write—not for empty praise but from conviction—and follow art simply and purely to ennoble the mind, not pander to the lust of the eye and the greed of gold. Show me such men and such a nation, and I will acknowledge there Christianity has found its seat and fulfilled the purpose ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... praised me infinitely. My glorious future, he said, was to carry a princess to England and sit among the, highest there, the husband of a lady peerless in beauty and in birth, who, in addition to what she was able to do for me by way of elevation in my country, could ennoble in her own territory. I had the option of being the father of English nobles or of German princes; so forth. I did not like the strain; yet I clung to him. I was compelled to ask whether he had news of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... regard to the far more important and real things—viz. elevation and purity of heart and mind. You are in the period of life to which fair dreams of the future are natural. It is, as the prophet tells us, for 'the young man' to 'see visions,' and to ennoble his life thereafter by turning them into realities. Generous and noble ideas ought to belong to youth. But you are also in the period when there is a keen joy in mere living, and when some desires, which get weaker as years go on, are very strong, and may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... surprise with which we see the hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do you good," said Janet; "it would ennoble your character. Not that it needs it," she added hastily. "And I could write another story about that quaint old man who paid the musicians to go away, and who made us all laugh ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... these things are small in comparison to the greater points of character by which he seemed to me to be distinguished. In all he said or did, he showed himself to be inspired by that chivalry of heart and mind which must truly ennoble him who possesses it, and without which one cannot ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... is it that my heart rejoices at it when my prudence should take alarm? Another mystery, which I do not undertake to explain. All that I know is, that she is poor, and that if I had a crown I should wish to ennoble it by placing it upon ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... that fly Yoked to Cytherea's car; Not the wings that lift so high, And convey her son so far, Are so lovely, sweet, and fair, Or do more ennoble love, Are so choicely matched a pair, Or with more ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... these, to a profusion of undiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur without effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in Sully Prudhomme's tours de force of philosophic poetry—when he unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are compelled ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... fell—but, falling, kept the highest seat, And in her loveliness, her pomp of woe, Where now she dwells, withdrawn into the wild, Still o'er the mind maintains, from age to age, Its empire undiminish'd. There, as though Grandeur attracted grandeur, are beheld All things that strike, ennoble; from the depths Of Egypt, from the classic fields of Greece— Her groves, her temples—all things that inspire Wonder, delight! Who would not say the forms. Most perfect most divine, had by consent Flock'd thither to abide eternally Within those silent ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... son 775 Of Copreus custom'd messenger of King Eurystheus to the might of Hercules. From such a sire inglorious had arisen A son far worthier, with all virtue graced, Swift-footed, valiant, and by none excell'd 780 In wisdom of the Mycenaean name; Yet all but served to ennoble Hector more. For Periphetes, with a backward step Retiring, on his buckler's border trod, Which swept his heels; so check'd, he fell supine, 785 And dreadful rang the helmet on his brows. Him Hector quick noticing, to his side Hasted, and, planting in his breast ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... have to learn from our immortal forefathers, the Greeks; and how far better than we did they solve their problem! Their type was not ours, but how much better did they revere, cultivate and ennoble the man they knew! Beside them we are barbarians in a thousand ways, as in education, eloquence, public life, poetry, and the like. If the number of its accomplished men be the measure of a civilization, ours is far below theirs. We have not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... art that the world has ever seen. Maude Adams reaches thousands; Mary Pickford reaches millions. It is clear that Mr. Lindsay wishes that the limitless influence of the moving picture may be used to elevate and ennoble America; for here is the greatest force ever known through which his gospel may be preached—the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... something more than a simple expedient. The whole nation had their eyes upon them. An unlimited confidence in their integrity, and the universal veneration for their persons, which closely bordered on idolatry, would ennoble the cause which they might make their own and ruin that which they should abandon. Their share in the administration of the state, though it were nothing more than nominal, kept the opposite party in check; while they attended the senate violent measures were avoided ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... decision controls his worth and destiny. For it is not to be supposed that play with all its virtue, its nourish and exercise of nascent powers, and its happy emancipation into broader and richer living can adequately motivate and permanently ennoble the energies of youth. Until some vocational interest dawns, education is received rather than sought and will-power is latent or but intermittently exercised. Play has a great orbit, but every true parent and educator seeks to know the axis of a ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... disposition developed rather than the intellectual after his work; anything that touches his feelings is good, and puts new life into him; therefore I want modern pictures, if possible, of that class which would ennoble and refine by their subjects. I should like prints of all times, engravings of all times; those would interest him with their variety of means and subject; and natural history of three kinds, namely, shells, birds, and plants; not ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... heirs male of Bartholomew. Only in the event of the extinction of the male line, direct or collateral, is it to descend to the females of the family; and those into whose hands it may fall are never to diminish it, but always to increase and ennoble it by all means possible. The head of the house is to sign himself "The Admiral." A tenth of the annual income is to be set aside yearly for distribution among the poor relations of the house. A chapel is founded and endowed for the saying of masses. Beatrix Enriquez is left to the care of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... within her and without, show all the vanity, weakness, and folly generally, of which he had at first believed her capable, but who, by prayer and effort, daily achieved victories over herself. In addition, she had manifested the most beautiful and God-like trait that can ennoble human character—the desire to save and sweeten others' lives. To have been lectured and talked to on the subject of religion in any conventional way by one outside of his sympathies would have been as repulsive as ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... than gold is a conscience clear, Though toiling for bread in a humble sphere; Doubly blest is content and health Untried by the lusts and the cares of wealth. Lowly living and lofty thought Adorn and ennoble the poor man's cot; For mind and morals in nature's plan Are the genuine tests of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... seems to me, an honour from the gods, a grace divine, is shed about the path of him the hero-ruler. (12) Not only does command itself ennoble manhood, but we gaze on him with other eyes and find the fair within him yet more fair who is to-day a prince and was but yesterday a private citizen. (13) Again, it is a prouder satisfaction doubtless to hold debate with those who are preferred ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... contrary, always uses his drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or soul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carve drapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern, that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Romola's best support under that supreme woman's sorrow had slipped away from her. The vision of any great purpose, any end of existence which could ennoble endurance and exalt the common deeds of a dusty life with divine ardours, was utterly eclipsed for her now by the sense of a confusion in human things which made all effort a mere dragging at tangled threads; all fellowship, either for resistance or advocacy, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... more in relation to his strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... live again. I do not wish to make the past assume a superiority over the present; but I think a contemplation of mediaeval art would often open a new avenue of thought and lead to many a pleasing and profitable discovery; I would too add the efforts of my feeble pen to elevate and ennoble the fond pursuit of my leisure hours. I would say one word to vindicate the lover of old musty writings, and the explorer of rude antiquities, from the charge of unprofitableness, and to protect him from the sneer of ridicule. For whilst some see ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by a woman, but is a bold and successful ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... acted during the whole period of the revolution, but that the standard of sentiment has not been lowered in those productions which have been designed expressly for the French stage during that period, and that the dignity of ancient virtue, and the elevation of natural feeling, still ennoble the tone ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... stretches forth its beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food to a million homes. It pervades every mart of trade; it loads trains and ships with the commerce of nations; and it helps to amplify and ennoble civilization. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... was prepossessing in the highest degree, displaying as it did every requisite of mind and body that can ennoble and dignify manly beauty. He stood at the summit of his prime, his form erect and symmetrical, though somewhat stouter than is usually to be found in men of his race. His bearing was graceful, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... exile, he endures What does he not? from lusts opposed in vain, And self-reproaching conscience. He foresees The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace, Fortune, and dignity; the loss of all That can ennoble man, and make frail life, Short as it is, supportable. Still worse, Far worse than all the plagues with which his sins Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes Ages of hopeless misery; future death, And death still future; not a hasty stroke, Like that which sends him to the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... churches of Antwerp and the neighboring villages. Hardly a statue or picture escaped destruction. Fortunately, the illustrious artist, whose labors were destined in the next generation to enrich and ennoble the city, Rubens, most profound of colorists, most dramatic—of artists; whose profuse tropical genius seemed to flower the more luxuriantly, as if the destruction wrought by brutal hands were to be compensated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... looked ever at Shafton when he looked elsewhere, and were dropped at once when they encountered his, that she was irresistible! In fine, the affectionate delicacy of her whole demeanour, joined to the promptitude and boldness she had so lately evinced, tended to ennoble the services she ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... instead of detecting the money-changer and driving him out of the temple, took him for a sentimental and chivalrous lover, and, helped by its only half-discarded doctrine of celibacy, gave virginity a heavenly value to ennoble its commercial pretensions. In short, Mammon, always mighty, put the Church in his pocket, where he keeps it to this day, in spite of the occasional saints and martyrs who contrive from time to time to get their heads and souls free to ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... forcibly; and if they once bestow an epithet upon a person, it will descend to his race and posterity; he will bear it about with him, in service, in retreat, in Petersburg, and to the ends of the earth; and use what cunning he will, ennoble his career as he will thereafter, nothing is of the slightest use; that nickname will caw of itself at the top of its crow's voice, and will show clearly whence the bird has flown. A pointed epithet once uttered ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... indeed be some recompense for the miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces of the human mind—the works of human genius that through the long course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and direct the lives of men, might all be purchased—I do not say by the cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired pedestrian eats his bread and cheese ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... mind, That for his cause you quite forgot my own— Could you suppose that I had thrown aside All woman's weaknesses, that you could dare Make me his angel, and confide alone In virtue for his armor? You forget What risks this heart must run, when we ennoble Passion with such a beauteous name ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... answered. "I anticipated it when you were in New York, and most sincerely do I congratulate you on the possession of so excellent and noble a heart. Prize it, dear Margaret, and make yourself worthy of all it can, of all it will impart, to ennoble and exalt ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... name was Fritzing; plain Herr Fritzing originally, but gradually by various stages at last arrived at the dignity and sonorousness of Herr Geheimarchivrath Fritzing. The Grand Duke indeed had proposed to ennoble him after he had successfully taught Priscilla English grammar, but Fritzing, whose spirit dwelt among the Greeks, could not be brought to see any desirability in such a step. Priscilla called him Fritzi when her lady-in-waiting dozed; dearest ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... all the learning of your philosophers and mathematicians can I never confer on any people the precious customs of the days of old. When we look back on what has been done by the would-be wise men of antiquity to ennoble the moral state of man, I will not speak of the mad ceremonial of the burlesque festivals invented by the revolutionists of 1793. They were but scenes of disorder and frenzy. Imagine, however, the purest and most solemn ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... better things, if from particular inclination, or from the taste of the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from failure in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and character that will raise and ennoble his works ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... best when life is in its fullest. We have not to wait till movement is slow and color is dull. We are not tempted to make a vacancy and call it piety; but when man's life is so full that it tempts him daily to self-consciousness and pride, then let him open it wide to the consciousness of God and ennoble it with the full dignity of that humility whose first condition is the presence of God in the soul that He ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... that several deputies protested against the decree. "The Jews," said the Abbe Maury, "have traversed seventeen centuries without mingling with other nations. They have never done anything but trade with money, they have been the scourge of agricultural provinces, not one of them has known how to ennoble his hands by guiding the plough." And he went on to point out that the Jews "must not be persecuted, they must be protected as individuals and not as Frenchmen, since they cannot be citizens.... Whatever you do, they will always ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... upon these men and their leader, but it is not by ridicule that they can be conquered. It is not by contemptuous utterances or by untrue reports that they can be overcome. It is not by belittling them that we can raise ourselves in the eyes of the men of to-day or ennoble ourselves upon the pages of history. It would be conduct more in accordance with the traditions of a great nation if we gave them credit for the virtues they possess ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... their own bosoms, and consider the generous seeds which are there planted, that might, if rightly cultivated, ennoble their lives, and make their virtue venerable to futurity; how can they, without tears, reflect on the universal degeneracy from that public spirit, which ought to be the first and principal motive of all their actions? In the Grecian and Roman nations, they were wise enough ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... name down to posterity. consecrate; dedicate to, devote to; enshrine, inscribe, blazon, lionize, blow the trumpet, crown with laurel. confer honor on, reflect honor on &c v.; shed a luster on; redound.to one's honor, ennoble. give honor to, do honor to, pay honor to, render honor to; honor, accredit, pay regard to, dignify, glorify; sing praises to &c (approve) 931; lock up to; exalt, aggrandize, elevate, nobilitate [Lat.]. Adj. distinguished, distingue [Fr.], noted; of note &c n.; honored ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... again with a leap, overflowing upon her fine skin. Understanding now came to her, with crushing force. Her knight made for her a pretty summary of an episode that was past. There was to come no coronation of words to ennoble these caresses: Mr. Canning, at parting, desired to thank her for her sweetness. And this was the high moment toward which she had been dancing on the fleece-pink of clouds ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... become sternness. Nature gave me a despotic disposition. I have had, and have still, many times the greatest difficulty to control it; but with God's help I shall succeed! My Elise, we will improve ever. On the children's account, in order to make them happy, we will endeavour to ennoble our own nature." ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... level down the higher classes instead of elevating the inferior. Liberty and equality then govern by their negative side, instead of exercising the positive and beneficent influence they should have, to develop all forces to their utmost, to ennoble the mind, to give more elasticity to the soul and greater vigor to thought, to give birth to those varied forms and to that moral energy, which should bring us nearer to final equality in the bosom ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... feed my conceit of my own talents. How infinitely more glorious to find my work-field and my prize, not in dead forms and colours, or ink-and-paper theories, but in a living, immortal, human spirit! I will study no more, except the human heart, and only that to purify and ennoble it.' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... nearly sure; She read some French romances here and there, Although her mode of speaking was not pure; For native Spanish she had no great care, At least her conversation was obscure; Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem, As if she deemed that mystery would ennoble 'em. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... expressing, and picturing language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing words, but with a very marked preference for the worse ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... than a leopard's skin, it is but developed or dwarfed. The influences of the war will have as many little forms as there are soldiers, and to attempt precision of summary is clearly vain. It is something of a truism to suggest that the war will ennoble and make more serious those who before the war took a noble and serious view of life; and that on those who took life callously it will have a callousing effect. The problem is rather to discover what effect, if any, will be made on that medium material which ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the modern state if it is to get the best result from the citizens born into it, and that is the need of honours and privileges to reward and enhance services and exceptional personal qualities and so to stir and ennoble that emulation which is, under proper direction, the most useful to the constructive statesman of all human motives. In the United States titles are prohibited by the constitution, in Great Britain they go by prescription. But it is possible ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... flagged toward the one whose marvelously fair features had first caught his attention and now promised to be links in a chain of causes that might produce effects little anticipated. He had virtually abandoned the project of seeking to ennoble and harmonize these features that suggested new possibilities of beauty to almost every glance, for the reason that he not only believed there was no mind to be awakened, but also because he had been led to think the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the leading principles of the revolution was the entire overthrow of all titles of distinction. Every man, high or low, was to be addressed simply as Citizen . Napoleon wished to introduce a system of rewards which should stimulate to heroic deeds, and which should ennoble those who had deserved well of humanity. Innumerable foreigners of distinction had thronged France since the peace. He had observed with what eagerness the populace had followed these foreigners, gazing with delight upon their gay decorations The court-yard of the Tuileries was ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... and trembling. The sorceress then, slowly turning, faced seaward. Her arms assumed the well-known beseeching attitude, the serpent bracelet glittering fiercely in the sun. Her voice changed, became softer. "Yet they are my people!" she continued, "and the last of our race. Ennoble them, great Gods! quicken their hearts and spare them!" Looking outward with the rapt look of a prophetess in whom, though torn with tempests of fanaticism and of passion, human and superhuman, no thought was mean, no sentiment ignoble, she poured out this her ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind. There is a man in Cincinnati, of small stature, and living in a small house of a street not easy to find, who is doing more to raise, inform, and ennoble Cincinnati than all her lovely hills and dales. It is the truly Reverend A. D. MAYO, minister of the Unitarian Church of the Redeemer. His walls are not wainscoted, and there is about his house no umbrageous park nor verdant lawn. It has only pleased Heaven, so far, to endow him with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Eminence are friends; the one has a daughter who is said to be very wealthy and whom he, with fond ambition, desires to see wedded to a man who can give her an illustrious name; the other possesses a nephew whom he can ennoble by the highest title that a man may bear who is not a prince of the blood,—and borne indeed by few who are not,—and whom he desires to see contract an alliance that will bring him enough of riches to enable him to bear his title with becoming dignity." I glanced at Mademoiselle, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... therefore, if society affected to class people according to their merits; for, as it is, no one need be ashamed of an obscurity which proves nothing against him. We have the satisfaction of perceiving everywhere traces of skill and power, proving irrefragably that there are among us men 'who ennoble nearly every walk of life, and would have ennobled any.' A similar tone appears in the short life of his father, written in the following year. True success in life, he says, is not measured by general reputation. Sir James Stephen's ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to be the highest bulwark of slavery. Its votaries understood its strength and weakness. Independent, well- paid free labor and industries (46) would ennoble the men of toil, bring wealth and power, build up populous towns and cities, and consequently overwhelm, politically and otherwise, the institution of slavery, or draw into successful social competition with plantation life wealthy inhabitants who knew not ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... depraved public taste as Hester does. I should use my talent, as I have often told her, for the highest ends, not for the lowest. It would be my aim," Mr. Gresley's voice rose sonorously, "to raise my readers, to educate them, to place a high ideal before them, to ennoble them." ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Manual will already have put the reader in possession of the main principles and ideas of Epictetus; with the mental and physical philosophy of the schools he did not in any way concern himself; it was his aim to be a moral preacher, to ennoble the lives of men and touch their hearts. He neither plagiarised nor invented, but he gave to Stoicism a practical reality. All that remains for us to do is to choose from the Discourses some of his most characteristic views, and the modes by which he ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the sweet and noble simplicity of the young chatelaine in giving her orders. If an air of distinction seems hereditary in some families it is surely because the exercise of the duties conferred by the possession of wealth has a natural tendency to ennoble the whole character ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... of the want of time, if they are not conscious of a want of power, or of desire to ennoble and enjoy it. Perhaps you are a man of genius yourself, gentle reader, and though not absolutely, like Sir Walter, a witch, warlock, or wizard, still a poet—a maker—a creator. Think, then, how many hours on hours you have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... dispute respecting the intellectual powers of the two sexes, and the consequent style of education suitable to each. Happily, the truth on this subject may be fully spoken, without obliging me to exalt the father at the expense of the mother, or ennoble man by denying the essential equality of woman. It is among the things settled by experience, that, equal or not equal in talents, woman, the moment she escapes from the despotism of brute force, and is suffered to unfold and exercise ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... he wrote ‘Merlin and the Gleam.’ From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that spirit of poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and which helped him through doubts and difficulties to ‘endure as seeing ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... chiefly sought to make clear the possibility of a positive morality on the basis of nakedness, beauty, and sexual influence, regarded as dynamic forces which, when suppressed, make for corruption and when wisely used serve to inspire and ennoble life. He worked out his thoughts on this matter in MSS., written from about 1870 to his death two years later, which, never having been prepared for publication, remain in a fragmentary state and have ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of those delicate critical distinctions which are sometimes supposed peculiar to modern writers. The piece has for its title La Deffense et Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... youthful and inexhaustible fancy of Homer which lights up the sublime images of a heroic age and moulds them into forms of surpassing beauty. The poetry of Hesiod appears struggling to emerge out of the narrow bounds of common life, which he strives to ennoble and to render more endurable. It is purely didactic, and its object is to disseminate knowledge, by which life may be improved, or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the influence of a superior destiny. His poem entitled "Works and Days" is so entirely occupied with the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of nature's peace suddenly showed him to himself. A man engaged in a struggle beyond his power!—committed to one of those tasks that rend and fever the human spirit even while they ennoble it! He had talked boldly to Stephen and the Bishop of "war"—"inevitable" and "necessary war." At the same time there was no one who would suffer from war more than he. The mere daily practice of Christianity, as a man's life-work, is a daily training ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no man. Labor is honorable, because the products of labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... pent in between the Danish frontier and the sea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, without ammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage and resolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiers in the midst of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... claim that the Scriptures contain a sufficient guide to moral duty and religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the last details of church organization and worship, and the minute direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of the Puritans.[113:1] In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. The Bible was used to contradict the moral sense. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... continued, enthusiastically; "and, if I mistake not, the Agamemnon will be an epoch in your life. You will find that all these studies will serve to ennoble your art, and you will be able to put mind into your work, and not merely form and colour. Do you know, I feel so well that I believe I shall not only live to finish Andrea del Sarto, but also to smoke ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive hope of helping it to know and redeem itself. His quality was philosophy, his style forgiveness. And for this temperate and logical and laconic work—giving nothing to the world for its mere enjoyment, but going beyond all that to ennoble each reader by his perfect renunciation of artistic claptrap and artistic license—for this aim he needed a mental method that could entirely command itself, and, when necessary, weigh and gauge with the laborious fidelity of a coal-surveyor, before the account was rendered with pen and ink ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... engaged our sympathy, or procured the distinction of our presence in arms. We were the heaven-born disseminators of freedom throughout Europe; the sworn enemies of kingly domination; and the missionaries of a political creed, which was not alone to ennoble mankind, but to render its condition ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... I mention these things, so mal-a-propos, as it may seem!—Only, let me tell thee, as an instance (among many that might be given from the same evening's conversation) of this fine woman's superiority in those talents which ennoble nature, and dignify her sex—evidenced not only to each of us, as we offended, but to the flippant Partington, and the grosser, but egregiously hypocritical Sinclair, in the correcting eye, the discouraging blush, in which was mixed as much displeasure as modesty, and sometimes, as the occasion ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... impatient with the hesitation of the imbecile, and fiercely indignant against half-heartedness and disloyalty. Whatever faults, therefore, his enemies may allege, these will all fade away in the splendor with which coming ages will ennoble the greatest of war ministers in the nineteenth century. He will be remembered as "one who never thought of self, and who held the helm in sunshine and in storm with the same ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... will suffice: "I believe that in Florence there are many noble and poor families with whom it would be a charity to form connections. If there were no dower, there would also be no arrogance. Pay no heed should people say you want to ennoble yourself, since it is notorious that we are ancient citizens of Florence, and as noble ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... discipline without murmuring. I never allowed an impure or improper word to be spoken in his hearing. I was careful that all his surroundings, and the men with whom he came in contact, should conduce to one end—to ennoble his nature, to set lofty ideals before him, to give him a love of truth and a horror of lies, to make him simple and natural in manner, as in word and deed. His natural aptitude had made his other studies easy to ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... love they do not reciprocate, but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman has, half consciously, done much to excite. In this case, she shall not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must ennoble and bless, whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish attraction of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and doubt, as to the reality of human goodness, so soon as the flush of passion is over. And, that you may avoid ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Meane time, God grants that I haue need of you. Our Brother is imprison'd by your meanes, My selfe disgrac'd, and the Nobilitie Held in contempt, while great Promotions Are daily giuen to ennoble those That scarse some two dayes since were ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... brought about by the opponents of religion, by materialistic doctrines, but is owing to the development of the religious sentiment itself. Instead of tending to an abrogation of that sentiment, it may be expected to ennoble its emotional manifestations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... discord. It is intended for the entireness of our sanctification: "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." Brethren, we dwell upon that expression "wholly." There is this difference between Christianity and every other system: Christianity proposes to ennoble the whole man; every other system subordinates parts to parts. Christianity does not despise the intellect, but it does not exalt the intellect in a one-sided way: it only dwells with emphasis on the third and highest part of man—his spiritual affections; and these it maintains ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... here? To adorn anguish, and ennoble death, And make infirmity A patient victory, And crown life's baseness with a glorious wreath, That fades not on thy bier, But fits, immortal soul! thy triumph still, In that bright world where ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... then, that I have sought to raise and ennoble the civilization of my country, that I have furthered commerce and industry, promoted shipping, given an asylum within the state to thousands of religious refugees from France—for this, that now, as the price for the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... is established on a pleasant eminence, in full view of his mansion, and it makes a fine ornament to the place; while he finds it a pleasant sight indeed, to see talented young men, and accomplished young women, going forth from Fabens' Academy, to improve society, and ennoble their own life with learning, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... in its history. The Italian language yields to every shade of gaiety with a facility which only requires a light inflection of the voice and a little difference of termination in order to increase or diminish, ennoble or travesty, the sense of words. It is particularly graceful in the mouth of children[28]. The innocence of this age and the natural malice of the language, form an exquisite contrast. In truth, it may be said, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... conspicuously evinced. Ferdinand, like the rest of his race, was passionately fond of field sports, and cared for nothing else. His queen had all the vices of the house of Austria, with little to mitigate, and nothing to ennoble them—provided she could have her pleasures, and the king his sports, they cared not in what manner the revenue was raised or administered. Of course a system of favouritism existed at court, and the vilest ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... we will say, in the case of a lady of inferior rank—or even birth, the King of these parts can, on her marriage with a nobleman—blank it all!—ennoble her father and mother, and their fathers and mothers, though they've been dead, or as good as ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... tread them under foot. I became sour and cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness which I knew not how to practice. This austerity, conformable to my new principles, I must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and I dare assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my nature. Yet, not withstanding, I ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... offered a start there awakens, sooner or later, the desire to share in the stores of knowledge which human intelligence has won, in the insight into the working of the forces of nature, which it has acquired and applied to industry, in the arts which ennoble and support human action; in short to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier star. This desire, which opens to the diligent the way to material prosperity and inner contentment, seems for society as ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... from golden calves and such folly," he said. "We are likely enough to have our waters of Marah. But it seems to me the best way to ennoble labor, give it its true dignity, and show the possibilities for the workmen, is concerted action. As matters stand now, few poor men can ever acquire sufficient capital to start any business; and perhaps this is not best when we consider ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... England itself. The majority of the English clergy denounced the proposition, and some even declared its author a madman; but Mr. Gladstone pursued his chosen way with energy and directness. In one of those elevated speeches with which he was accustomed to ennoble debate, he laid the details of his plan open to the Commons. The Irish Church was to be disestablished and disendowed, its bishops were to lose their seats in Parliament, and it was to become a free and independent ecclesiastical body, like the Presbyterian, Wesleyan, or Catholic ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... have finished my —of true love never did run smooth Course of empire Courtesy, I am the very pink of Counterfeit presentment Coward, thou slave —upon instinct Cowards die many times —, what can ennoble Crabtree, and old iron rang Creator, remember thy Creature not too bright Credulity, ye who listen with Crime, within thee, undivulged —, it was worse than a Critics, not trust in Critical, nothing if not Criticising elves Cross, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... do long for honours, but it is that I may ask her to share and ennoble them." In fine, I loved as other men loved—and I fancied a perfection in her, and vowed an emulation in myself, which it was reserved for Time to ratify ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... new blue sky. These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures. With a daughter so incomparably gifted,—a matchless creation that was enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left it,—that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy that Providence could not allow! What was his mere venial transgression ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... among the yellow beards; and the bouncing, laughing, round-breasted girls arrange their ribbons and their vows," Mr. Allen is remembering Theocritus, the Pervigilium Veneris, and the silver ages of literature no less than his own state and his own day. He uses local color habitually to ennoble it, and but for his extravagant taste for sweetness he might have achieved pastorals ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... Gospel had as yet never been proclaimed there. The name of Jesus had never been heard in that wild north-land, and so as none of the blessedness of religion had entered into the hearts of the people, so none of its sweet, losing, elevating influences had begun to ennoble and bless their lives and improve their habits. So he pondered over what he witnessed and heard, and was thankful when the day's hunting was over, and Memotas would talk to him as they sat there on their robes around the fire, often for hours at a time. From him he learned how it was that they ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... humanity to the level of the barn-yard," this is merely a catch-phrase intended to arouse prejudice and to obscure the facts. The reader may judge for himself whether the eugenic program will degrade mankind to the level of the brutes, or whether it will ennoble it, beautify it, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... they seemed a different race of creatures from the girls whose lives were spent in dress, gossip, pleasure, or ennui. They were girls still, full of spirits fun, and youth; but below the light-heartedness each cherished a purpose, which seemed to ennoble her womanhood, to give her a certain power, a sustaining satisfaction, a daily stimulus, that led her on to daily effort, and in time to some success in circumstance or character, which was worth all the patience, hope, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or soul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carve drapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern, that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... in life, especially men's lives. She got it also in what books she read,—especially in Tennyson and in every novel, as well as in the few plays she saw. There it was embodied as Woman of Romance,—sublime, divine, mysterious, with a heavenly mission to reform, ennoble, uplift—men, of course,—in a word to make over the world. The idea of it had come down from the darkness of the middle ages,—that smelly and benighted period,—had inflamed all romance, and was now spreading its last miasmatic touch over the close of the nineteenth century. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the whole work to be done over again. If Art and Science were based on the degradation of men I would say 'away with them.' But they are not. They elevate and ennoble men by bringing to them the fruition of elevated and noble minds. They are expressions of high thought and deep feeling; thought and feeling which can only do good, if it is good to become more human. The artist is simply one who has a little finer ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... of the world directed his attention to political life, and Christianity and politics are in no wise antagonistic. On the contrary, it is the aim of Christianity to elevate and ennoble even earthly relations; it is the true religion of the people. No saying is so misunderstood, so entirely twisted from its real meaning, as that uttered by Christ: "My kingdom is not of this world." This earth, the theatre of divine love and power, is represented as ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... coming to us through three centuries seems of yesterday, so full is it of those delicate critical distinctions which are sometimes supposed peculiar to modern writers. The piece has for its title La Deffense et Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give it lustre. We are accustomed to speak of the varied critical and creative movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the Renaissance, and because we have a single name for it we may sometimes ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the ruins of his army, sustained with heroic firmness the efforts of his enemies. Resolved to fall with arms in his hand, he rushed on the battalions, and carried terror and death into the midst of their ranks. But his valour could only ennoble his fall. Still repulsed, still invulnerable, he relinquished the hope of meeting death or victory. In the night of the 19th of March he returned to Naples: the Queen appeared indignant at seeing him. "Madame," said he to her, "I was not able to find death." He departed ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... grouped around a semicircular low table so as to give each guest an unobstructed view from the pavilion. Pertinax—neither guest nor host, but a god, as it were, who had arrived and permitted the city of Antioch to ennoble itself by paying his expenses—stretched his long length on the middle couch, with Galen the physician on his right hand, Sextus on his left. Beyond Galen lay Tarquinius Divius and Sulpicius Glabrio, friends of Pertinax; and on Sextus' left was Norbanus, and beyond him Marcus Fabius a young ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... grew dim, and her thoughts drifted towards Austin Selwyn. He had been contemptible! A pacifist! His idealism was a pose to try to ennoble utter cowardice. At a time when men's blood ran high he had prated of brotherhood, and peace, and suggested that the infamous Hun had a soul! How she hated him! . . . And when she had finished with that thought her heart's ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... primary importance in the scheme of atonement. But with the loss of the Temple, the idea of sacrifice entirely vanished, and atonement became a matter for the personal conscience. It was henceforth an inward sense of sin translating itself into the better life. 'To purify desire, to ennoble the will—this is the essential condition of atonement. Nay, it is atonement' (Joseph, Judaism as Creed and Life, p. 267; cf. supra, p. 45). This, in the opinion of Christian theologians, is ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... particulars with regard to your expulsion of Betty Vivian. I must know, and fully, why Betty was expelled. Pause a minute before you speak, dear. For long years I have allowed this club to exist in the school, believing much in its good influence—in its power to ennoble and raise the impressionable character of a young girl. I have not interfered with it; on the contrary, I have been proud of it. To each girl who became a Speciality I immediately granted certain privileges, knowing well that no girl would be lightly admitted to a club with ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... conceded that because the new testament contains, in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature. But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water—it perverts and destroys that which it should nourish ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... magnify, amplify, augment, expand, develop, increase, extend, swell; dilate, descant, launch out, expatiate; ennoble, broaden. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... account. His character, like those of all the other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers: but this could not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject—the heroine of the poem. Every thing is done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for him; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes; and not only excuse, but sympathize ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the judgment on each and every part which he saw written in the young man's face. As he watched, something like hope and exultation began to light up his sullen, heavy features; thought and feeling began to spiritualize and ennoble what but a little before had been so coarse ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... animate and elevate his style; and it was at such points as these, too, that he would begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the "inexhaustible torrent of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he would express a whole system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of marvellous imagery, to the inspiration of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of harping which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... all other necessaries exported from France to the colony should be likewise exempt. Other privileges were permission to nobles, clergymen, and officers to join the company without derogation from their rank, and an agreement to ennoble twelve prominent members of the company; full naturalization as French citizens of all colonists and converted natives; and the advancement of all artisans who should pursue their trades in the colony for six years, to full ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to renounce the strife, no longer to keep up one's courage. They are proud and happy in their distress. They have a vague feeling that this distress will regenerate them after the manner of a baptism of faith and glory and ennoble them for all time in the remembrance of men. An unexpected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human race and from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly passed over their lives and ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... woman who is just clever enough to make the most of her sexual attractions for trivially selfish ends; but Candida's serene brow, courageous eyes, and well set mouth and chin signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the affections. A wisehearted observer, looking at her, would at once guess that whoever had placed the Virgin of the Assumption over her hearth did so because he fancied some spiritual resemblance between them, and yet would not suspect either her husband ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing words, but with a very marked preference for the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... expression, and individuality that ennoble your face are a sealed book to all but me. Mine is the power which transforms you into the most lovable of men, and that is why I would keep your mental gifts also for myself. To others they should be as meaningless as your eyes, the charm of your mouth and features. Let it ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... production of that description which the world has yet seen. And this too is true. But I doubt even whether that conviction is so strong as the conviction of the young successful lover, that he has achieved a triumph which should ennoble him down to late generations. As he goes along he has a contempt for other men; for they know nothing of such glory as his. As he pores over his "Blackstone," he remembers that he does so, not so much that he may acquire law, as that he may acquire Fanny; and then all ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The nihilists are ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... is honorable, because the products of labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... was not business troubles that occupied every sleeping and waking thought of Hankinson Judson Terwilliger. His mind was now set upon the hardest problem it had ever had to cope with, that problem being how to so ennoble the spectre cook of Bangletop that she might outrank the ancestors of his landlord in the other world—the shady world, he called it. The living cook had been induced to remain partly by threats and partly ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... populations, which would not listen to preachers, heard with delight the amiable warnings of this friendly man, and as his own generation grew older, a new race dawned to whom he appeared in the light of a pure-spirited evangelist. 'Improve the time! watch it! ennoble it! It is a part of the beautiful and perpetual circle of everlasting duty. It is to the great future only the little disk of a second-hand, traversed as swiftly, while the great rim of heaven accepts it as a part of the eternal round!' Such was the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... invents few, if any, new plots or stories. He simply takes an old play or an old poem, makes it over quickly, and lo! this old familiar material glows with the deepest thoughts and the tenderest feelings that ennoble our humanity; and each new generation of men finds it more wonderful than the last. How did he do it? That is still an unanswered question and the source ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the truth, there was very little in Tom's life which tended to ennoble him. It is true there was a service for soldiers every Sunday morning in one of the big buildings in the town, and while Tom, lover of music as he had always been, was somewhat influenced by the singing of the men, and while the hymns reminded him of his Sunday-school ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... and by this our present Charter do give, grant and confirm, the name, style, title, dignity and honour of the same Principality and Earldom, and him, our said most dear Son, the Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as has been accustomed, we do ennoble and invest with the said Principality and Earldom, by girting him with a sword, by putting a coronet on his head, and a gold ring on his finger, and, also, by delivering a gold rod into his hand, that he may preside there, and may direct and defend those parts. To hold to him ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Engraving gravurajxo. Engross (fully occupy) priokupi. Enhale enspiri. Enigma enigmo. Enjoin ordoni. Enjoy gxui. Enlarge pligrandigi. Enlighten klerigi. Enlist varbi. Enlistment varbo. Enliven gajigi. Enmity malamikeco. Ennoble nobeligi. Enormous grandega. Enough suficxe. Enquire informigxi. Enquiry informigxo. Enrage furiozigi. Enrapture ravi. Enrich ricxigi. Enrichment ricxigo. Enrol varbi. Ensign-bearer standardisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister, but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle and be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, and live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be promoted—then I pray you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... to Progress, based on the moral defects of men, apply with tenfold force against Religion, which has practically had the whole field to itself. And we assert that he is grievously mistaken if he imagines that supernatural beliefs can ennoble knaves or give wisdom to fools. When he talks about "Christ's blood shed to purchase our souls," and specifies the first message of his creed as "Come and be forgiven," he is appealing to our basest motives, and turning the ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... it, but the silly spirit of mockery within me had so far infected my wits that I cried out in pretended astonishment, "O marvellous fancy that can so ennoble a neighbor's brat!" The which was very false and foolish of me, for I know well enough now, and knew very well then, that love, while it lasts, can ennoble any child, maid, or matron. Lord, the numbers of girls I have likened to Diana ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived at length some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... read AEschylus," he continued, enthusiastically; "and, if I mistake not, the Agamemnon will be an epoch in your life. You will find that all these studies will serve to ennoble your art, and you will be able to put mind into your work, and not merely form and colour. Do you know, I feel so well that I believe I shall not only live to finish Andrea del Sarto, but also to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... Noel with a peculiar emphasis which was habitual to him: "it is incredible, if you will; but yet it is true. That is to say, for thirty-three years, ever since my birth, this woman has played a most marvellous and unworthy comedy, to ennoble and enrich her son,—for she has ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... where neatness and propriety of dress should be observed, and where labor may be forgotten. The life led here should be labor's exceeding great reward. A family living like this—and there are families that live thus—will ennoble and beautify all their surroundings. There will be trees at their door, and flowers in their garden, and pleasant and graceful architectural ideas in their dwelling. Human life will stand in the foreground of such a home,—human life, crowned with its dignities and graces,—while animal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... sorrow to ennoble us, to call out in us pity, sympathy, unselfishness, most surely does He send for that end such a sorrow as this, which touches in all alike every source of pity, of sympathy, of unselfishness at once. Surely He meant to bow our hearts as the heart of one man; and He has, I trust and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... one has, to be strict and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number of those who say and do not, to be in earnest—this is the discipline by which alone man is enabled to rescue his life from thraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, and to make it eternal. And this discipline has been nowhere so effectively taught as in the School of Hebraism. The intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... elements of unsettled opinion a recognised standard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the theme of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate their offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and the young:—and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assisted to inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the Mede at Marathon, and arrested the Persian might in the Pass of Thermopylae. For, as the spirit ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and high breeding of a very ancient but impoverished nobility holding them in some restraint; and, then, THEIR fortunes were still uncertain; the funds were not firm, and even the honorable and worthy Jacques Lafitte, a man to ennoble any calling, was shaking in credit. Had we been brought into the market a twelvemonth later, there is no question that we should have been caught up within a week, by the wife or daughter of some of ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... me those only who were good and great. 210 Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood, Go! and pretend your family is young; Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long. What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... may I ask? Simply because the necessity makes the demand, and the necessity is the ever-advancing spirit of to-day, which urges all to attain something that will not only benefit themselves, and be an incentive to others, but will enlighten and ennoble the coming generation ...
— Silver Links • Various
... exceed the sweet and noble simplicity of the young chatelaine in giving her orders. If an air of distinction seems hereditary in some families it is surely because the exercise of the duties conferred by the possession of wealth has a natural tendency to ennoble the whole ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the government was the man of all men for the task. Histories many and from different points of view have been written of Washington's administration; all are interesting, and the subject seems to ennoble the writers. Statesmen meeting with students to discuss the character and political acts of Washington marvel at his wisdom in great things and his patience in small things, at the dignity and good sense with which he established ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... to one class of people a life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and ennoble the destiny of the masses ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... long a tax on your patience, to enter on a detailed narration of the conflict which ensued. The hour of trial served only to develop and ennoble the character of Toussaint, who rose, with misfortune, above the allurements of rank and wealth which were offered as the price of his submission; and the very ties of parental love he yielded to the loftier ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... literary history he wrote ‘Merlin and the Gleam.’ From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that spirit of poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and which helped him through doubts and difficulties to ‘endure as ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... over impediments came toward her. For a moment as he stood over her the sunlight was on his face, and she, looking up at him, thought that he was not only a fine but quite a beautiful man. The light seemed to soften and yet ennoble his features, and his eyes, unblinking in the glare, were blue and clear as water. When he sat down close to her little nest she pushed the basket away from her, and raising her hand laid it on his knees. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... splendid it is, and that it is one's only chance of getting on! To shut your eyes to the possibility of the great man having a touch of the commonplace, a touch of the ass, even a touch of the knave in him, doesn't ennoble your conception of human nature. If you can only glorify humanity by telling lies about it, and by ruling out all the flaws in it, you end by being a sentimentalist. "See thou do it not ... worship God!" that's one of the finest things in the Bible. Of course ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the business, and it is the business of the owners to make them pay. The public wants filth and it gets it. The plays given to patrons have only the purpose to make money. They are not written to educate, to uplift, to ennoble. The men who make them look only to the collection of their royalties. The best play of the year is Gillette's "Secret Service." It is trifling. It does not teach anything. It inculcates no moral. It does not deviate in any way from the well known "war play." In these days there ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the drudge. The drudge does only what he must when he works, the artist all he can. The drudge longs for the end of labor, the artist for it to begin. The drudge studies how he may escape his labor, the artist how he may better his and ennoble it. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... (as every playgoer can testify) is an engine of incalculable power for influencing society; and every effort to purify and ennoble its aims seems to me to deserve all the countenance that the great, and all the material help that the wealthy, can give it; while even those who are neither great nor wealthy may yet do their part, and help to— "Ring out the darkness of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... to do that," said the old lady, turning her pleasant face toward him; "but even if the human heart is desperately wicked, shouldn't that make us much more eager to try to educate, to ennoble, and restrain? However, as far as my experience goes, and I have lived in this wicked world for seventy-five years, I find that the human heart, though wicked and cruel, as you say, has yet some soft and tender spots, and the impressions made upon it in youth ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... same time it must be conceded that their ethical system was marked by signal blemishes and radical defects. After all its excellence, it did not give roundness, completeness, and symmetry to moral life. The elements which really purify and ennoble man, and lend grace and beauty to life, were utterly wanting. Their systems were rather a discipline of the reason than a culture of the heart. The reason held in check the lower passions and propensities of the nature but it did not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and Hebrew, art was symbolic; Greek art, classical; Christian art is romantic, bringing into art entirely new sentiments of a knightly and a religious sort—love, loyalty and honor, grief and repentance—and understanding how by careful treatment to ennoble even the petty and contingent. The sublime belongs to symbolic art; the Roman satire is the dissolution of the classical, and humor the dissolution of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... of a wife. One example will suffice: "I believe that in Florence there are many noble and poor families with whom it would be a charity to form connections. If there were no dower, there would also be no arrogance. Pay no heed should people say you want to ennoble yourself, since it is notorious that we are ancient citizens of Florence, and as noble as ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... ennoble a writer, and therefore are great books characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to define but easy to understand, a quality which leaves ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by the egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are already instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur without effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in Sully Prudhomme's tours de force of philosophic poetry—when he unfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the form of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are compelled to the service of a rigorous logic; or in ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... he could not go home in the state he was then; he felt sure he should kill the twins if he did. He pondered for awhile, and then he thought he would go and hear some music. He said he thought a little music would soothe and ennoble him—make him feel more like a Christian than he ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... than her loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels cannot long cover up her ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... never able to return it at any time, for, once she had got it, the Russian made away with it in some secret manner and refused to give it up. Her price for returning it was his royal father's consent to ennoble her, to receive her at the Mauravanian Court, and so to alter the constitution that it would be possible for her to ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... from the taste of the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from failure in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... men. And whom shall we look to first but the Masters of Thought? Surely the true poet will do something to lift the burden of his own age. What is the use of wondrous gifts of language, if they are employed to enervate, and not to ennoble, their hearers? What avails it to trim the lights of history, if they are made to throw no brightness on the present, or open no track into the future? And to employ Imagination only in the service of Vanity, or Gain, is as if an ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... mind by the catastrophe of Elode's. Here, however, the similitude ends. There is nothing to be said respecting the comparative features of Charles the Bold and Chactas, except that the Indian possessed those qualities of the heart which most ennoble human nature. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... been hand in hand with man, has assisted, supported and encouraged him, and now there are women ready to help reform the life of the body politic, and side by side with man work to purify, refine and ennoble the world. Miss Couzins seemed Inspired by her own thoughts and carried the audience along with her in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the purpose of perfect companionship. We have none of the higher aspirations in common, we should be none the happier for tender experiences of parenthood, none the holier for any joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, that might come to us to strengthen and ennoble us if rightly enjoyed or endured. And this, I think, is not altogether my fault. But however that may be, it is out of my power to remedy it now. All I can do is to prevent unedifying scenes between us by showing you such courtesy and consideration as is possible. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... beautiful sounds! Neither is it a passing emotion of little moment in our lives we receive from the senses, for they are our perpetual body-guards, surrounding us unceasingly; and these constantly repeated impressions become powerful agents in life; they refine or beautify our souls, they ennoble or degrade them, according to the beautiful or mean objects which surround us. A dirty, slovenly dress will exert an evil moral influence upon the child; it will aid in destroying its self-respect; it will incline it to habits which correspond with such a garment. The beautiful scenes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... have often told her, for the highest ends, not for the lowest. It would be my aim," Mr. Gresley's voice rose sonorously, "to raise my readers, to educate them, to place a high ideal before them, to ennoble them." ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... partner this decision controls his worth and destiny. For it is not to be supposed that play with all its virtue, its nourish and exercise of nascent powers, and its happy emancipation into broader and richer living can adequately motivate and permanently ennoble the energies of youth. Until some vocational interest dawns, education is received rather than sought and will-power is latent or but intermittently exercised. Play has a great orbit, but every true parent and educator seeks to know the axis ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... phenomena, he has passed his novitiate, and becomes one of that happy body of men who not only see what is perceived by the mass of their fellows, but are enabled to look through those chains of action which, when comprehended, serve to rationalize and ennoble all that the senses of man, aided by the instruments which he has devised, tell us concerning the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... quotation from one of Chopin's letters farther on.] With all Schumann's admiration for Chopin and praise of this sonata, it appears to me that he does not give Chopin his due. There is something gigantic in the work which, although it does not elevate and ennoble, being for the most part a purposeless fuming, impresses one powerfully. The first movement begins with four bars grave, a groan full of pain; then the composer, in restless, breathless haste, is driven by his feelings onward, ever onward, till he comes ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... wicked fire kindled on the altar of Beauty. Man is as guilty as she. He has praised Beauty and foolishly smiled upon it. He has chosen it for his companion. He has passed by worth in search of Beauty. So he has helped women to be vain and trifling. He has not sought to ennoble her heart so much as to weaken it with flatteries. And he together with her has suffered as a consequence. Man and woman rise and fall together. What injures or benefits one does ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... be heaped upon us. Do you imagine that I have been wasting the last three years of my life? do you believe that the ambition which was the subject of your illusive aim at college is dead? No! look here, Carl and Krantz, this day week will see me famous, and ennoble my family till it vies ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... cruel, less degrading and dwarfing for the children that are born into it, and I have tried also to make clear that realization of, and revolt against, the bad management and waste and muddle which result from our present economic system. I want now to point out that Socialism seeks to ennoble the intimate personal life, by checking and discouraging passions that at present run rampant, and by giving wider scope for passions that are now thwarted and subdued. The Socialist declares that life is now needlessly dishonest, base and mean, because our present social organization, such ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... tell us that the practice gives a dignity and a grace to the carriage, and a freedom and a swing to the gait, which nothing else will do. Depend upon it, that so much of our burdens of work and weariness as is left to us, after we have cast them upon Him, is intended to strengthen and ennoble us. But do not let there be the gnawings of anxiety. Do not let there be the self-torment of aimless prognostications of evil. Do not let there be the chewing of the bitter morsel of irrevocable ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... oppression causes us to act as Tarquin did, and to level down the higher classes instead of elevating the inferior. Liberty and equality then govern by their negative side, instead of exercising the positive and beneficent influence they should have, to develop all forces to their utmost, to ennoble the mind, to give more elasticity to the soul and greater vigor to thought, to give birth to those varied forms and to that moral energy, which should bring us nearer to final equality ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... tomes of fable and of dream I sought an eligible theme; But none I found, or found them shared Already by some happier bard, Till settling on the current year I found the far-sought treasure near. A theme for poetry, you see— A theme t' ennoble ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... with a leap, overflowing upon her fine skin. Understanding now came to her, with crushing force. Her knight made for her a pretty summary of an episode that was past. There was to come no coronation of words to ennoble these caresses: Mr. Canning, at parting, desired to thank her for her sweetness. And this was the high moment toward which she had been dancing on the fleece-pink of clouds ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... correctly rendered 'glorify.' Is not that the end of a trouble which has been borne in company with Him; and from which, because it has been so borne, a devout heart is delivered even whilst it lasts? Does not all such sorrow hallow, ennoble, refine, purify the sufferer, and make him liker his God? 'He for our profit, that we should be partakers of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... screw your, to the sticking place —mounteth with occasion Course, I have finished my —of true love never did run smooth Course of empire Courtesy, I am the very pink of Counterfeit presentment Coward, thou slave —upon instinct Cowards die many times —, what can ennoble Crabtree, and old iron rang Creator, remember thy Creature not too bright Credulity, ye who listen with Crime, within thee, undivulged —, it was worse than a Critics, not trust in Critical, nothing if not ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... be over and we'd have more time for getting what we deserved out of life. But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive, that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to ennoble their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ever been ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... his head. "But love between man and woman is much the same, a power to ennoble or debase, angel of light or demon of hell, a thing befouled and shamed by brutish selfishness or glorified by sacrifice. Yes, love is to-day as it was when mighty Babylon worshipped Bel. Yesterday, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... say things have steadily gone from bad to worse with me, and certainly I shall not pretend to feel any love for suffering in itself. On the contrary, it hurts. It does not ennoble. It rather brutalises, unless it becomes so great that it embraces all things. I was once Engineer in charge at the First Cataract—now I am a blacksmith in a country parish. And that hurts. I am cut off from reading because of my eyes, and from intercourse with people ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation: of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... literature contemporary with the great age of Greek art. Plato expressly states that the artist only makes "an imitation of an imitation"; and the higher ideas of divinity preached by philosophers did not so much tend to ennoble the popular conceptions as to substitute others for them. Above all, the monotheistic idea, even if associated with the name of Zeus, tended to become an abstract conception with little relation to the national god of Hellas, whom Phidias embodied ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... never so thoroughly "at home" as in his own pulpit; his great heart never so kindled as when unfolding the glorious gospel of redeeming love. The consecration of his splendid powers to the work of the ministry helped to ennoble the ministry in the popular eye, and led young men of brains to feel that they could covet ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... be known that the woman who makes a good record in the shop shall be respected in the home, and that she who becomes skilled in thought and acquainted with scientific research, should find thereby an introduction to society, that will ennoble her, and it is impossible to describe the effect that would be produced upon the minds of all. In this work women of culture can keep step with Jesus, and become the benefactresses of their sex and blessings to mankind. Let woman help woman, and society will be reformed. Let man be true to ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... who were listening to the preacher. He was, we found, an enthusiastic Protestant—Herman Modet by name. He was setting forth, in clear and forcible language, the great truths of Christianity, as opposed to the false teaching of Rome. He showed how the one must, when received, elevate and ennoble the human mind; while the other was calculated in every way to lower and debase it. He then, in eloquent language, called upon his countrymen to unite in overthrowing that fearful system, supported by the Pope and ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... mark time, she herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... A match with a low woman corrupts a stream of blood as long as the Danube, tyranny, villainy, and executions are mere fleabites, and leave no stain. The good Lord of Bath, whom I saw on Richmond-green this evening, did intend, I believe, to ennoble my genealogy with another execution: how low is he sunk now from those views! and how entertaining to have lived to see all those virtuous patriots proclaiming their mutual iniquities! Your friend Mr. Doddington, it seems, is so reduced as to be relapsing into virtue. In my ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Jesus had never been heard in that wild north-land, and so as none of the blessedness of religion had entered into the hearts of the people, so none of its sweet, losing, elevating influences had begun to ennoble and bless their lives and improve their habits. So he pondered over what he witnessed and heard, and was thankful when the day's hunting was over, and Memotas would talk to him as they sat there on their robes around the fire, ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... necessity and the duty of union, and proved the strength of their sincere love for their native soil and their venerable institutions. The Germans, though poor in gold and silver, showed that they were rich in patriotic ardor, and in all those glorious sentiments which ennoble a great and progressive nation. After twenty years' contention, and infinite sacrifices and humiliations, the different princes of Germany recovered their ancient territorial possessions, and were seated, more firmly than before on the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... in the heaven has looked upon such basenesses that I seek only a patch of shade. God help me; you will recall the decree that said my mother was not a Queen! God help us! God help us all! You will ennoble my mother's memory. With a decree! Can all the decrees you can make render my mother more sacred? When you decreed her not a Queen, did a soul believe it? If now you decree that a Queen she was, who will believe you? I think I had rather ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... of what they knew; to know what they were ignorant of; to keep secrets which had no existence; to lock the door to mend a pen; to appear deep when they were shallow; to set spies in motion, and to intercept letters; to try to ennoble the poverty of their means by the grandeur of their objects. The censorship, of course, did not escape. The scene being laid in Spain, Figaro affirmed that at Madrid the liberty of the press meant that, so long as an author spoke neither of authority, nor of public worship, nor of politics, nor ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... that he had only one life to lose, and it would be interesting to see how brave he was; besides, the King would have good reason to ennoble him if he overcame them. The King at last allowed himself, though rather unwillingly, to be won over by Red's persistency, and one day asked Ring to go and kill the oxen that were in the wood for him, and bring their horns ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Colonel. To be sure you can buy now and then a Senator or a Representative but they do not know it is wrong, and so they are not ashamed of it. They are gentle, and confiding and childlike, and in my opinion these are qualities that ennoble them far more than any amount of sinful sagacity could. I quite agree with ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... . As we met for a moment, when the lecture was over, he spoke kindly of my work, evincing that sympathy of the scholar with the work of progressive philanthropy. 'We are all striving for one end,' said Lanier, with genial, hopeful smile, 'and that is to develop and ennoble the humanity of which ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of closely united men who, employing symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... driven out, desperately fighting, and pent in between the Danish frontier and the sea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, without ammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage and resolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiers in the midst of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but they thereby help greatly to stimulate our efforts. The example of heroes must always be set before a people in order to ennoble ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... simple reason that they are not sincere. I put aside an educated enthusiast such as Westlake. The proletarian Socialists do not believe what they say, and therefore they are so violent in saying it. They are not themselves of pure and exalted character; they cannot ennoble others. If the movement continue we shall see miserable examples of weakness led astray by popularity, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... couple of gulden to shoot him by accident when he passes in the dark; I'll turn a mad dog into his yard, that it may bite him when he comes out in the morning. They ought to hang the rascal! I'll set his house on fire, that he may burn with it! And they ennoble such a fellow! In the town council they make him assessor, and the good-for-nothing sits at the green table with me. I, whose grandfather was of ancient Hungarian nobility, must suffer him near me, this ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... that we have need of you: Our brother is imprison'd by your means, Myself disgrac'd, and the nobility Held in contempt; while great promotions Are daily given to ennoble those That scarce, some two days since, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and the low in intellect is not the method to elevate and ennoble a new land. The stream will not rise higher than the fountain, and a slave, though free, cannot at once be a truly self-reliant man, least of all can he be a good teacher of self-reliance and progress. He must first teach himself, well as he may, before he can do much for others. The colonist ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... head that looks as if it was born in the purple, you would ennoble anything, dear Theodora; ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of mark, to whom, for their excellent merits, the noble spirit of the ancients had set up statues and other memorials in public places. Nay more, it not only destroyed, in order to build the churches for the Christian use, the most honoured temples of the idols, but in order to ennoble and adorn S. Pietro (to say nothing of the ornaments which had been there from the beginning) it also robbed of its stone columns the Mausoleum of Hadrian, now called the Castello di S. Angelo, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... person, but is the consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical analysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a Spirit of God, to ennoble and enable the human spirit. Why need there be, if the difference between an animal and a man be one of degree alone, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the highest it will indeed ennoble the passions by Character, or moderate them by Grace, or manifest in them the power of the Soul: but on the other hand it is precisely those higher passions, depending on the relationship of the Soul with a Supreme Being, that are entirely suited to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... already told you was Ludwig Von Beethoven. In some legal proceedings in which he was concerned, it was intimated by the court that the word von, of Dutch origin, does not ennoble the family to whose name it is prefixed—according to the laws of Holland—that, in the province of the Rhine in which Beethoven was born, it was held to be of no higher value—that, consequently, the halo of nobility ought to be stripped ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... difference between the sexual life (Liebesleben) of antiquity and ours lies in the fact that the ancients placed the emphasis on the impulse itself, while we put it on its object. The ancients extolled the impulse and were ready to ennoble through it even an inferior object, while we disparage the activity of the impulse as such and only countenance it on account of ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... impurity in vestments 'bright with something of an angel light,' to exalt spleen into elevation of soul, and selfishness into a noble scorn of the world, and, with the ringing cadences of an enthusiastic style, to ennoble the vulgar and to sanctify the low. How much may be done, with an engine of such power, in increasing the numbers of 'The Family' may be conceived. The Muse of Faking, fair daughter of the herald Mercury, claims her place among ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the last details of church organization and worship, and the minute direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of the Puritans.[113:1] In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. The Bible was used to contradict ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... clothed them with tragic dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakespeare's works thinking to improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is radically odious, and to endeavor in any manner to ennoble it, is to violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... say it, from the baseness of another person (but it is my desire to justify the innocent, and to accuse none). Believe me, my friend, this young man hath the noblest generosity of heart, the most perfect capacity for friendship, the highest integrity, and indeed every virtue which can ennoble a man. He hath some faults, but among them is not to be numbered the least want of duty or gratitude towards you. On the contrary, I am satisfied, when you dismissed him from your house, his heart bled for you more ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... right. I couldn't bear to have you think such a thing, especially—well, I'll tell you why some day. But I do wish you had a title. Do they ever ennoble accountants in this ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... is different. To her the multiplication table pulsates with life. It stretches forth its beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food to a million homes. It pervades every mart of trade; it loads trains and ships with the commerce of nations; and it helps to amplify and ennoble civilization. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... keep from golden calves and such folly," he said. "We are likely enough to have our waters of Marah. But it seems to me the best way to ennoble labor, give it its true dignity, and show the possibilities for the workmen, is concerted action. As matters stand now, few poor men can ever acquire sufficient capital to start any business; and perhaps this is not best when we consider the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to sleep in their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air, walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove. They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct.... What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow ... They do not ask for the cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for motherhood.... They do not swill vodka at ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... to do with New Year's thoughts? Only this, that base and foolish as they are on such lips, it is possible to lift them from the mud, and take them as the utterance of a lofty and calm hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and lowly resolve which may ennoble life. Like a great many other sayings, they may fit the mouth either of a sot or of a saint. All depends on what the things are which we are thinking about when we use them. There are things about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... for Freedom's right? He's dead alone that lacks her light! And murder sullies in heaven's sight The sword he draws:— What can alone ennoble fight? A noble cause! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... truth secured through reading acts in two ways upon the reader. It spiritualizes his character, and it makes him mighty in action. Knowledge on almost any subject has a marked tendency to sharpen one's wits, to refine his tastes, to ennoble his spirit, to improve his judgement, to strengthen his will, to subdue his baser passions, and to fill his soul with the breath of life. It is only upon truth that the soul feeds, and by means of knowledge that ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... She resolved to ennoble her conduct from that moment of her life onwards. She would exercise kind patronage towards Swithin without once indulging herself with his company. Inexpressibly dear to her deserted heart he was becoming, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... injudiciously published—place her far down among the multitude. From these untuneful utterances we gladly turn to her prose. There she shows strength of character and goodness of heart. One aim, never lost sight of, is perceptible through all, and gives unity to the whole; this is a fervent desire to ennoble human life; consequently her works will long have influence, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of theirs, whom they desire to elevate and ennoble, that they are but dust,—a necessary, unconscious secretion of I know not what material substance; that the thought of a Kepler or Dante is dust, or rather phosphorus; that genius, from Prometheus to Jesus, brought down no divine spark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... The firemen came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the miscreants who surrounded them, and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attempt to perform their duty, or so feeble and farcical a one, as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and ennoble. ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Solomon denounced; tempted to sneering unbelief in what is great and good, what is laborious and self- sacrificing, and to the fancy that you were sent into this world merely to get through it agreeably;—then fortify and ennoble your hearts by Solomon's vision. Remember who you are, and where you are- -that you stand before the Temple of Wisdom, of the science of things as God has made them; wherein alone is health and wealth for body and for soul; ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... social inequalities? Love levels all distinctions, is an adage old as the hills. It brings down the proud heart, and teaches condescension to the haughty spirit; but its tendency is to elevate, to ennoble. It does not make a peasant of the prince, but a ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... never break the home-silence; they mould the young life and stamp their impress upon it. How important then that all such objects should be chosen, not only as treasures of artistic beauty, but for their power to elevate and ennoble character. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... some French romances here and there, Although her mode of speaking was not pure; For native Spanish she had no great care, At least her conversation was obscure; Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem, As if she deemed that mystery would ennoble 'em. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures. With a daughter so incomparably gifted,—a matchless creation that was enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left it,—that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy that Providence could not allow! What was his mere ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... thus by birth a gentleman; but had his descent been otherwise, his works would ennoble him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... national king, with an authority curtailed in every shire by that of the royal shire-reeves, officers charged with levying the royal revenues and destined ultimately to absorb judicial authority. Among the later nobility of the thegns personal service with such a lord was held not to degrade but to ennoble. "Horse-thegn," and "cup-thegn," and "border," the constable, butler, and treasurer, found themselves officers of state; and the developement of politics, the wider extension of home and foreign affairs were already transforming ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... with Mendelssohn," said Schumann. "To say that poverty is the proper stimulus of genius is to talk pernicious nonsense. Poverty slays, it does not nourish; poverty narrows the vision, it does not ennoble; poverty lowers the moral standard and makes a man sordid. You can't get good art out ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... his strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... essential to his own well-being, had not yet come. The bonds which had held the world together through so many ages loosened and broke only to leave man face to face with his own selfishness. The motives that sway and ennoble the common conduct of men were powerless over the ruling classes. Pope and king, bishop and noble, vied with each other in greed, in self-seeking, in lust, in faithlessness, in a pitiless cruelty. It is this moral degradation that flings so dark a shade over the Wars of the Roses. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... affections? As long as he was in the world was it right that he should isolate himself from any of its sympathies and trials? Why was it not a higher life to enter into the common lot, and suffer, if need be, in the struggle to purify and ennoble all? He remembered the days he had once passed in the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane. The perfect peace of mind of the monks was purchased at the expense of the extirpation of every want, all will, every human interest. Were these men anything but specimens in a Museum ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... do I this honor unto thee, Thus to ennoble thy victorious name, Sith thou doest shew no favour unto mee, 150 Ne once move ruth in that ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... bosom of which all persons should be persons with full self-consciousness, with an individual destiny independent of the destiny of others, with the moral and material means to accomplish this destiny, with freedom, with dignity, and with all the attributes which characterize and ennoble the person and ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... Levant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard Street and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strength and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall ennoble. A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... triumphs of minutely finished, expressive Art. Nor is the little Republic poor in contemporaneous artistic talent. Pradier was born and grew up in presence of Mont Blanc, whose sublime grandeur may well inspire the dreams of the sculptor and ennoble him. Calame, Diday, and Hubert in landscape painting, and Hornung in historical painting, (widely known by his "Death of John Calvin,") are all sons of Geneva. Thalberg, the musician, is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... How is it that my heart rejoices at it when my prudence should take alarm? Another mystery, which I do not undertake to explain. All that I know is, that she is poor, and that if I had a crown I should wish to ennoble it by placing ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
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