ennoble

The author makes clear that suffering, despite popular mythology, typically does not ennoble.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026

What Gadsby did was give the audience permission — moral permission — to turn their backs on what challenged them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch.

From New York Times ● Jun. 1, 2023

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

It’s a great, and possibly fictitious, myth that ennobles an ethos of isolated bravery.

From Slate ● Mar. 26, 2024

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

Rubenhold ennobles five Victorian-era women who were best known as victims and, in doing so, rebukes the bloody fixations of the true-crime genre.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 19, 2019

As respects their ability to become such true friends, an ability which truly ennobles man, I have no doubt that her family were peculiar, very peculiar indeed.

From Papers from Overlook-House by Almore, Casper

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

Patriotism was ennobling, self-sacrifice was reflexive; heroism was rewarded, and everybody was proudly in this fight together.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025

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

It adds an ennobling air to their real function, which is propaganda.

From Salon ● Apr. 20, 2023

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

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

From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan