meliorate

“I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge, more happily calculated than any other, to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry and meliorate the morals of an enlightened and free People.”

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2021

His father was much pleased to see his son endeavour to make himself agreeable in ladies’ society; he thought it augured a good sign, and would be conducive to meliorate and refine his manners.

From Alida or, Miscellaneous Sketches of Incidents During the Late American War. Founded on Fact by Amelia Stratton Comfield

The face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born.

From The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature Representative Prose and Verse by Various

He said it was too late to plant maize, and therefore he should sow turnips, which would help to meliorate and prepare it for next year.

From A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson by Watkin Tench

This Howard felt, and, by his efforts to meliorate their condition, he became the acknowledged prince of philanthropists, and earned an immortal and sacred fame.

From Recollections of Windsor Prison; Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection by John N. Reynolds

That something the manure of birds, meliorated and altered by time, had supplied, and lo! the glorious results were before his eyes.

From The Crater by James Fenimore Cooper

Now this Draconian code has been so meliorated and softened by the diffusion of mercy and humanity as to take life for life only; is pleading powerfully for the abolition of the death-penalty altogether.

From Tablets by Amos Bronson Alcott

The potatoes, which had first been brought from the Cape of Good Hope, were greatly meliorated by change of soil; and, with proper cultivation, would be superior to those produced in most other countries.

From Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook : with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods by Andrew Kippis

The love of power was his ruling passion;—with him no gentle or generous sentiment meliorated the harshness of authority, or directed it to acts of beneficence.

From A Sicilian Romance by Ann Ward Radcliffe

Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat meliorated their condition.

From The Land of Thor by J. Ross (John Ross) Browne

But to undertake expeditions with a design of civilizing the world, and meliorating its condition, is a noble object.

From Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook : with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods by Andrew Kippis

Advancing years presented a softening, meliorating, ripening influence.

From Memorials of the Independent Churches in Northamptonshire with biographical notices of their pastors, and some account of the puritan ministers who laboured in the county. by Thomas Coleman

She is peculiarly adapted to carry forward enterprises which have to do with meliorating the condition of society.

From True Woman, The A Series of Discourses by Justin D. Fulton

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition.

From No Treason, Vol. VI. The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner

I trust that a brighter future is to come, not from the desolation, but from gradual, meliorating changes of the present.

From Harvard Classics Volume 28 Essays English and American by Charles William Eliot