ennoble

Framing the Declaration as more than a manifesto establishing a new nation, Coolidge described it as “everywhere to ennoble humanity.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

It’s a conviction that allows us to ennoble ourselves with pathos, with rueful maturity, with wisdom won too late.

From New York Times ● Sep. 6, 2021

The number of people who, out of civic generosity, think that they can enlarge or ennoble their selves by giving their energies to a good larger than themselves?

From Salon ● May 27, 2019

For Hegel, as Hägglund reads him, a religious institution is really just a community that has come together to ennoble “a governing set of norms—a shared understanding of what counts as good and just.”

From The New Yorker ● May 13, 2019

The "benevolent qualities of head and heart by a primeval decree are not dependent on education, for although it enlightens and enlarges the mind of man, it does not always ennoble it."

From Stories of Old Kentucky by Purcell, Martha Grassham

Bel Powley and Liev Schreiber breathe life and tenderness into Miep and Otto's partnership, and Powley ennobles Miep with a range of emotions including a plausible measure of humor.

From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2023

Nothing can quite convey the devastation of those who knew and loved “the fallen,” a euphemism that ennobles their sacrifice but also fails to capture the awfulness of violent death.

From Washington Post ● May 29, 2022

We’d like to believe that suffering instructs and ennobles; that our grief, fear and pain increases our sympathy for the grief, fear and pain of others.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 6, 2020

For it must not be presumed that mores necessarily grow worse from knowing the moral sciences, which teach the virtues, indeed, there is not the slightest doubt that moral education amends and ennobles them.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2019

This love of freedom and of justice is an instinctive feeling, if not an inspired sentiment, which ennobles the patriot, and converts him into a hero.

From Nature and Culture by Rice, Harvey

Better to live in a world where freedom of expression is ubiquitous than one where the “truth” is told to us by a few ennobled journalists.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026

He stood down as an MP in 1992 and was ennobled as a cross-bench peer in the same year, despite his party's opposition to the Lords at the time.

From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2025

And that is the thing about generative AI and language learning models: They exist only by feeding on the ennobled human soul.

From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2023

And they’re very different from the ennobled peasants in popular genre paintings by artists like the Le Nain brothers in France or cheery laborers by Dutch artist Johannes Lingelbach.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2023

These opportunities, therefore, made these men successful, and their outstanding virtue enabled them to recognize that opportunity, whereby their nation was ennobled and became extremely happy.

From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli

His balding head’s scraggly hair—in contrast to the wigs worn by just about every Frenchman at the time, no matter the social class—is both ennobling and a bit enfeebling, like an aging but distinguished mane.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Shostakovich’s detractors have accused him of ennobling Stalin while defenders have sought out subtle musical cues of dissent.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 1, 2024

Philanthropy, the ennobling pursuit of the rich and famous, is in the headlines.

From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2022

“Theater isn’t supposed to be accusing anyone. It’s supposed to be supporting and maybe ennobling them in some way.”

From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2021

And this confession made his romantic gestures all the more ennobling.

From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan