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

To ennoble what could seem a shallow, idiosyncratic gesture, I call this campaign the post-nominal revolution, hoping for a future when you will never have to use anyone’s name, ever.

From New York Times ● May 30, 2019

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

He believes that the Novel should strengthen life, not undermine it; ennoble, not defile it; for it is good tidings, not evil.

From Essays on Modern Novelists by William Lyon Phelps

That awful blur is another stain on history, one that ennobles “The High Ground’s” mission.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 1, 2023

It is also often seen as a form of art that ennobles those who play and listen to it.

From Salon ● Mar. 20, 2021

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

Penance is illusion, yet illusion is pleasant: illusion ennobles.

From Psyche by Louis Couperus

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

But on the very eve of publication, Trevor-Roper, who had been ennobled as Baron Dacre, called to say he had changed his mind and now felt they were forgeries.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2023

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

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

It adds a memorable entry to the American project of ennobling voices of the people—in this case, that of the heroine, Janie Crawford, a freethinking woman driven by what Hurston calls “that oldest human longing—self-revelation.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 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

In 1650, Diego Velázquez painted this ennobling portrait of Juan de Pareja, a studio assistant enslaved in his studio.

From New York Times ● Apr. 7, 2023

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

From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2022

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

From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan