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Magnify   Listen
verb
Magnify  v. i.  
1.
To have the power of causing objects to appear larger than they really are; to increase the apparent dimensions of objects; as, some lenses magnify but little.
2.
To have effect; to be of importance or significance. (Cant & Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Magnify" Quotes from Famous Books



... supernatural, is the meeting-place of earth and heaven. From one point of view our worship is in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. It is "with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven," that we laud and magnify GOD'S Holy Name. We join in an eternal act of worship, which is that of the whole Church, the departed with the living, whose adoration ascends continually before the ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... Poplar, worried over those Boston craft, declared we must be first again, and first we were. But both Boston and Poplar, in their efforts to perfect an old idea, did not see a crude but conquering notion taking form to magnify and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... is said,(185) "And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt." For this reason we are bound to acknowledge, to thank, to praise, to glorify, to exalt, to magnify, to bless, to elevate, without limit, HIM who has done for our fathers and us all these miracles. He brought us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity, and from thick darkness to great light, and from servitude ...
— Hebrew Literature

... gleaned from his prolific writings, disclose the principles which governed his actions in public life, and at the same time they magnify his ability as a writer. When we reflect that his schooldays embraced instruction only in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to which he added surveying later, the clearness and elegance of his style become a matter of surprise. His epistolary correspondence is a ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... sure the best, Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay Turn thy rapture move; 390 For fools admire, but men of sense approve: As things seem large which we thro' mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... thought her handsome, pleasing, graceful—but now he saw a new person, or he saw her in a new light. He marked the superior intelligence, the animation, the eloquence of her countenance, its variety, whilst alternately, with arch raillery, or grave humour, she played off Mr. Soho, and made him magnify the ridicule, till it was apparent even to Lady Clonbrony. He observed the anxiety lest his mother should expose her own foibles; he was touched by the respectful, earnest kindness—the soft tones of persuasion with which she addressed her—the care not ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... this knowledge was a mystery, and Jack would throw no light on his own past. At present, having watched the funeral coaches pass away, he lifted up his voice in a terrific blare, singing, 'All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.' Instantly he was assailed by the juvenile portion of the throng, was pelted with anything that came to hand, mocked mercilessly, buffeted from behind. For a while he persisted in his psalmody, but at length, without warning, he rushed upon his tormentors, and with angry ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... prison of Toledo or Madrid. Yet such a prospect does not discourage me in the least, but rather urges me on to persevere; for I assure you—and in this assertion there lurks not the slightest desire to magnify myself and produce an effect—that I am eager to lay down my life in this cause, and whether a Carlist's bullet or the jail-fever bring my career to an end, I am perfectly indifferent. But I have other matters now ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... have," returned Mme. Charman, with an obsequious bow. "If I were the kind of woman to magnify my services, I would tell you what trouble it cost me to find this address, and how I ran all over Paris and spent ten ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... the way in which the Lord set to work to promulgate the mercies peculiar to Lourdes is astounding. To make them known He is no longer content to spread the report of its miracles by word of mouth; no, and it might be supposed that in His eyes Lourdes is harder to magnify than La Salette—He adopted strong measures from the first. He raised up a man whose book, translated into every language, carried the news of the vision to the most distant lands, and certified the truth of the cures effected ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... in the kitchen-grate, the coals will glow and cool until I see her face; nay, but yesterday, the shoulder of mutton upon the spit gyrated until it at last assumed the decapitated head of Mary. 'Think of her faults and magnify them'—nay, that were unjust and unchristian. Let me rather correct mine own. I fear me that when Ovid wrote his picture he intended it for the use of young men, and not for an old fool like me. Behold! I have again broken ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... it best that we should meet quietly," the merchant said, as they shook hands. "I know the Ghentois, how greedily they swallow every rumour, how they magnify the smallest things, and how they rage if their desires are not gratified, and give themselves wholly up to the demagogues. 'Tis for that reason that I think it well that you have come ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... there till Mr Slope caught her, or was she to go in among the crowd with tears in her eyes and passion in her face? She might in truth have stood there long enough without any reasonable fear of further immediate persecution from Mr Slope; but we are all inclined to magnify the bugbears which frighten us. In her present state of dread she did not know of what atrocity he might venture to be guilty. Had any one told her a week ago that he would have put his arm around her waist at the party of Miss Thorne's ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... not ease, he loved not personal indulgence, he loved not sensual gratification. The elevation of France to prosperity, wealth, and power, was a limitless ambition. The almost supernatural success which had thus far attended his exertions, did but magnify his desires and stimulate his hopes. He had no wish to elevate France upon the ruins of other nations. But he wished to make France the pattern of all excellence, the illustrious leader at the head of all nations, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... the coral rock close to it, which I filled with salt water, and stocked with sundry specimens of anemones and shell-fish, in order to watch more closely how they were in the habit of passing their time. Our burning-glass, also, now became a great treasure to me, as it enabled me to magnify, and so to perceive more clearly, the forms and actions of these ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... uneasily dubious about his opinion of her, she felt a peculiar anxiety to-day, lest he might think of her with contempt, as one triumphantly conscious of being Grandcourt's wife, the future lady of this domain. It was her habitual effort now to magnify the satisfactions of her pride, on which she nourished her strength; but somehow Deronda's being there disturbed them all. There was not the faintest touch of coquetry in the attitude of her mind toward him: he was unique to her among men, because he had impressed her as being ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him to compassionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled by it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, 'Christ bears this grief with me,' to those petty molehills that you sometimes magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that then it is a shame for you to be stumbling over them. But on the other hand, never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... thou my soul, bless God the Lord; And all that in me is, Be stirred up, his holy name To magnify and bless. Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God, And not forgetful be Of all ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... a cane and cheeks like blood-red anemones of Nu'uman, lips like coralline and teeth like strung pearls in carcanets of gold virgin to man, and a neck like an ingot of silver, above a shape like a wand of Bn: her middle was full of folds, a dimpled plain such as enforceth the distracted lover to magnify Allah and extol His might and main, and her navel[FN59] an ounce of musk, sweetest of savour could contain: she had thighs great and plump, like marble columns twain or bolsters stuffed with down from ostrich ta'en, and between them a somewhat, as it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... millions of years hence as it is now—which cries to all heaven and earth, from the skies above our heads to the green herb beneath our feet, "O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever." On that one hymn I take my stand. That is my charter as a student of Natural Science. As long as that is sung in an English church, I have a right to investigate Nature boldly without stint or stay, and to call on ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... myself this question: Given the Caesarean environment, which of the Caesars would this person resemble—Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero? I take each trait of character, each mental and emotional bias, each little oddity, and magnify them a thousand times. The resulting image gives ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... sentiments to be encouraged; and, on the way home from church—if church it could be called—I adopted a most insidious device to magnify her interest. I took her into the confidence, that is, of my love affair, and I had no sooner mentioned a young lady with whom my affections were engaged than she turned upon me with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from their first adventure in these seas. I was an equerry of our master, the Infante Henry, at that time, and busy with him in rebuilding and enlarging the old arsenal on the neck of Cape Sagres; whence, by his wisdom, so many expeditions have been sent forth since to magnify God and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... neither false nor true— Should Jove himself, in calculation mad, Still negatives to blank negations add; How could the barren ciphers ever breed; But nothing still from nothing would proceed. Raise, or depress, or magnify, or blame, Inanity will ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... of the clergy has always been to destroy the joy of life, and multiply and magnify the terrors and tortures of death and perdition. They have polluted the heart and paralyzed the brain; and upon the ignorant altars of the Past and the Dead, they have endeavored to sacrifice the Present ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... Now dry these dear eyes, and put old thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away from you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. And do not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has acted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind that shine in marshy places, a better Light will shine upon her path one day. I know that you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... pregnant, Asa and Josaphat, with good king Hezechiah, In thy sight to do that was to thee right pleasant. To quench idolatry thou raisedst up Elijah Jehu, Elisha, Micah, and Obdiah, The Syrian Naaman thou purgedst of a lepry[623] Thy works wonderful who can but magnify? Arise, Jerusalem, and take faith by and by,[624] For the very light that shall save thee is coming. The Son of the Lord appear will evidently, When he shall resort, see that no joy be wanting. He is thy saviour, and thy life everlasting, Thy release from ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... inexperienced in love, was a good fighter. The best of the sex are. She dropped into the rocking-chair, and began rocking backwards and forwards while still tugging at her gloves, and said, in a gradually warming voice, "I certainly shall not magnify Mr. Van Loo's silliness to that importance. And I have yet to learn what you mean by talking about a rendezvous! And I want to know," she continued, suddenly stopping her rocking and tilting the rockers impertinently behind her, as, with her elbows squared on the chair arms, she tilted her own ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... much like other people engaged in lucrative business. He is apt to magnify his calling, to make much of any symptom which will bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I found a case in one of our medical journals, a couple of years ago, which illustrates what I mean. Dr. of Philadelphia, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... object of a liberal education not only to obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify the natural differences between the two. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... influence on ideas and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes, until the most insignificant message from the subconscious becomes a distressing and alarming symptom. The person whose mental ear is strained to catch every little creaking of his internal machinery can always hear some kind of rumble. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... world, that three prayers will be granted unto me; so I consult thee for counsel as to what shall I ask." Quoth she, "O man, the perfection of man and his delight is in his prickle; therefore do thou pray Allah to greaten thy yard and magnify it." So he lifted up his hands to heaven and said, "O Allah, greaten my yard and magnify it." Hardly had he spoken when his tool became as big as a column and he could neither sit nor stand nor move about nor even stir from his stead; and when he would have carnally known his wife, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... their trials and discouragements are forgotten, their struggles to keep the victory are out of mind, and they speak in the highest praise of the work God has done. In the exhilaration of the moment they magnify the work. We do not say they overdraw their experience; for really no tongue can tell it; but while they are all aflame with ardor and praise, you may be going through a trial. So, of course, their experience seems to outshine yours so far that yours suffers. But ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... liturgy is as nought. Then she may well play Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and borrow from profane authors the gaiety of their songs to celebrate the brief and empty joy of the body. Imagine, and indeed it happens, the canticle of the Virgin used to magnify the glad impatience of a bride. Fancy the Te Deum, to hymn the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... fashions, functions, with educational and social outlooks from the feminine point of view. My work might show the bias of sex, but it dealt with the larger questions which were common to humanity; and when I recall the causes which I furthered, and which in some instances I started, I feel inclined to magnify the office of the anonymous contributor to the daily press. And I acknowledge not only the kindness of friends who put some of the best new books in my way, but the large-minded tolerance of the Editors of The Register, who gave me such ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... wanted ballast to carry sail hard, and they had felt this disadvantage; particularly Neb, when he first got the boat on a wind. I could understand, by his account of the difficulties and dangers he experienced,—though it came out incidentally, and without the smallest design to magnify his own merits,—that nothing but his undying interest in me, could have prevented him from running off before the wind, in order to save his own life. An opportunity now offered to remedy this evil, and ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God, (He loves the burthen)— God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment He ventured neck or nothing—heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: "Wilt thou trust ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... time to time for the common tie and uplift of worship in the mass. The exercises of festival occasions also help to bring this about, and the common gatherings, regular or special, of the school, tend to magnify the united leadership of officers and teachers. These should never interfere with the work of instruction, the main objective of the school, but should supplement it. Departments should be made to feel their partnership in the Sunday school enterprise, and this may be brought about by the reading ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... she would do just as I said, me and my chum would scare Pa so he would swear off. She said she would, and we went to work. First I took Pa's spectacles down to an optician, Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in their place that would magnify, and I took them home and put them in Pa's spectacle case. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum's uncle's trunk, about half the size of Pa's clothes. My chum's uncle is a very small man, and Pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller than Pa's hat, and the name out ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... the rudeness of the means of transport, than anything that has ever been attempted since in the same line. The example of the Assyrian tyrant was followed, after a long interval, by the Romans, who sought to magnify and commemorate their conquests in Egypt by spoiling the land of its characteristic monuments. The Caesars, one after another, for more than a hundred years, took advantage of their victories and the ruin of the unhappy land of Egypt to convey its beautiful obelisks to their own capital ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... of shooting down and massacring any of the straggling soldiery: the clergy were attacked and driven from their houses; so that, throughout a considerable portion of Scotland, there was no security either for property or for life. It is now the fashion to praise and magnify the Covenanters as the most innocent and persecuted of men; but those who are so ready with their sympathy, rarely take the pains to satisfy themselves, by reference to the annals of the time, of the true character ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... Larry spoke convinced Walter that the danger was serious. Larry was not given to magnify danger, and usually treated all risks with carelessness and indifference. Walter knew that he would gather, from the stablemen and the people who brought in provisions, much more as to the state of popular feeling in the country than he was likely to know, ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... be the greatest obstacle to Irish progress and prosperity. Irish Nationalists have made Home Rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. Every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance Home Rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... done more than relieve Alfred's pain: the warm sense of thankfulness had softened his spirit, and carried off his selfish fit. He knew not how kind people were to him, and how ungrateful he had been to punish his innocent mother and sister, and so much to magnify a bit of thoughtlessness on Harold's part; to be angry with his mother for not driving him out when she thought it might endanger his health and life, and to say such cruel things on purpose to wound her. Alfred felt himself far more cruel than ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... occurrences is given by the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, (Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 9, cap. 14,) whose situation opened to him the very best sources of information, which is more than counterbalanced by the defects in his own character as an historian, - his childish credulity, and his desire to magnify and mystify every thing relating to his own order, and, indeed, his nation. His work is the source of most of the facts - and the falsehoods - that have obtained circulation in respect to the ancient Peruvians. Unfortunately, at this ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... and breadth of our happy country, and carrying on their dismal business with an almost malignant persistency. Longwindedness, pomposity, the exaggeration of petty trivialities, the irresistible desire to magnify one's own wretched little achievements, to pose as the little hero of insignificant adventures, and to relate them to the whole world in every dull detail, regardless of the right of other men to get an occasional word in edgewise—these are the true marks of the genuine bore. He must know that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... when, arriving at Les Touches at seven in the morning, he saw from afar Beatrix at a window watching for him, and wearing the same straw hat she had worn on the memorable day of their first excursion. For a moment he was dazzled and giddy. These little things of passion magnify the world itself. It may be that only Frenchwomen possess the art of such scenic effects; they owe it to the grace of their minds; they know how to put into sentiment as much of the picturesque as the particular sentiment ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... not get over the objections which they feel to meeting the advances of our kinsmen, they would at least show some sort of regret at their failure. But not a bit of it. Their one idea all along has been to magnify the difficulties in the way in order to make party capital out of the business. They saw their way to a good cry about "taxing the food of the people," the big and the little loaf, and so forth, and they went racing after it, regardless of everything but its electioneering ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner

... have given away our resources, what should have been our common wealth; we have squandered our land, wasted our forests. "Such trifles are not my business," interrupts History, rather feverish of manner; "my duty to record and magnify the affairs of the great."—Allow me, madam; we have given away our coal, the wealth of the past; our oil, the wealth of to-day; except we do presently think to some purpose, we shall give away our stored electricity, the wealth of the future—our water power which should, which must, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... smartly out, all unawares, at precisely right angles to her own derelict equipage. That was the juncture of the Reverend Stephen Arnold's interference, walking and discussing with Amiruddin Khan, as he was, the comparative benefits of Catholic and Mohammedan fasting. It would be easy to magnify what Stephen did in that interruption of the considerate hearing he was giving to Amiruddin. The ticca-gharry ponies were almost spent, and any resolute hand could have impelled them away from the carriage-pole with which the roans threatened to impale their wretched ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... REPORTS. [Exod. 23:1, Lev. 19:16, Ps. 15:1-3] We must not invent nor repeat false reports concerning our neighbor. We must not say behind his back what we fear to say to his face. We must not magnify his faults, [Matt. 7:3-5] nor impute evil motives to him, nor make his words and conduct look as bad as possible. The slanderer is worse than a thief and causes incalculable suffering and misery. [Prov. 25:18, Jas. 3:5-8] We should remember that words once ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... wicked clerk should be insufficiently punished than that he should be punished by a layman. Of all men Archbishop Thomas was the most likely to fall into this mistake. He was, as Chancellor, prone to magnify his office, and to think more of being the originator of great reforms than of the great reforms themselves. As Archbishop he would also be sure to magnify his office, and to think less, as Anselm would have thought, of reconciling the true interests of the kingdom ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... in short, "of judgment to come." And here he would magnify his ministry. When our discourses are regarded as connected only with the present period, their force, I grant, is of no avail. We speak for a Master who has left us clothed with infirmities, which discover no illustrious marks of Him by whom we are sent. We have only our voice, only ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... "Women magnify everything!" cried Kendal, harshly. "I suppose you will begrudge me a moment's comfort where another young girl is concerned, because you can ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... breaks out into that sublime canticle, the Magnificat: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior, because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid, for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."(247) On these words I shall pause to ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... had stirred up cruel anxieties which were slumbering in his breast. What could there be to trouble the heart of Pierrotin in a fine new coach? To shine upon "the road," to rival the Touchards, to magnify his own line, to carry passengers who would compliment him on the conveniences due to the progress of coach-building, instead of having to listen to perpetual complaints of his "sabots" (tires of enormous width),—such was Pierrotin's laudable ambition; but, carried away with the desire to ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... I weep that Love's no more, And magnify his reign? Sure never mortal man before Would have his grief again. Farewell the long-continued ache, The days a-dream, the nights awake, I will rejoice and merry make, And never ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... apprehend, first, that you are laboring under the delusion already mentioned, by which men ever magnify the importance of the events of their own age, and forget how readily future generations will let them slip from their memory, and let documents which contain the record of them slip out of existence; and, secondly, because you do not give yourself time to realize all that is implied in supposing ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... Anthony; long life to her! I should have been delighted to respond to the toast proposed, and to bear my heartfelt tribute of respect and love for the true and unselfish reformer, to whom women are no more indebted than are men. "Time shall embalm and magnify her ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... time had not come for doubling that rate. The Association is glad to recognize this worthy aspiration and itself to avow the spirit of it, and still further to remind the friends that the disposition of leaders on the field to magnify the work of each year is also in the same line. Nevertheless, we find that those who become in some sense responsible for the nurture and support of these ecclesiastical children born to us become conservative instead of becoming rash, as is sometimes averred. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various

... East, and of what success it shall please God to bestow on the labours of our little Society. Let nothing slip into those accounts which may reasonably give offence to any man; nothing that may seem improbable; nothing which may not edify the reader, and give him occasion to magnify the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... enough. M. de Bargeton, spread at full length in his great chair, appeared to see and understand all that was going on; his silence added to his dignity, and his figure inspired Lucien with a prodigious awe. It is the wont of imaginative natures to magnify everything, or to find a soul to inhabit every shape; and Lucien took this gentleman, not for a granite guard-post, but for a formidable sphinx, and thought it necessary to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... and press-notices are frank flatteries. They magnify the good points and say little as possible about the bad ones. I look back over my lyceum life and see that I hindered my progress by reading my press-notices instead of listening to the verdict of my audiences. ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... passion thus groundless and self-generated might well be full-grown as soon as born. The more greedy and craving, too, that it has nothing real to eat; it therefore proceeds at once to "make the meat it feeds on," causing him to magnify whatever he sees, and to imagine many things that are not. That jealousy, however, is not the habit of his mind, appears in that it finds him unprepared, and takes him by surprise; insomuch that he forthwith loses all self-control, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... explanation would involve 'dynast[y]' and 'polic[y]', even if it did not oblige us to turn 'Pompey' into 'Pomp[y]'. In this case it may be suspected that the noun was assimilated to the verb, which follows the analogy of 'magnify' and 'multiply'. The voice of the people which now gives us 'prophec[)y]' seems here to have felt the power of analogy and assuredly ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... hand, did not an earnest desire to glorify God in his merciful dealings, together with the consciousness that to no other could the task he safely delegated, act as a counterpoise to the discouragement. I do desire to magnify the exceeding riches of God's grace to me, if I may do so without increasing the charge of arrogant assumption. I know that among the diversity of gifts which he bestows on his creatures, he granted ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... are certain formations in the letters that lead me to suppose this signature on the will is a rank forgery. I'm going to prove that idea by giving the will and some of Mr. Dalton's signatures to a handwriting expert. He will magnify them and throw the image of the enlarged signatures on a screen by means of a magic-lantern. Any one can then tell at a glance if this signature is ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous

... moved in the first place to exalt it. And that I do exalt it may be seen by this reason: it happens that it is possible to magnify things in many conditions of greatness, and nothing makes so great as the greatness of that goodness which is the mother and preserver of all other forms of greatness. And no greater goodness can a man have than that of virtuous action, ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... take us with you, brother. Leave us not in this gloomy solitude. To brood o'er anxious thoughts. The mists of doubt Magnify evils ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... doubt me. It was never my intention to keep you in the dark or in leading strings longer than necessary. I am above the petty spirit which, to magnify its importance, keeps to itself half a secret, to be told at another time. You shall know all, and we will concert our measures together as man and man, for I can easily guess from this moment you have put ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... of glass would magnify objects was known before the end of the thirteenth century, and from that little fact have come microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, and cameras; and from these in turn has come a great part of our present knowledge of natural processes in men, animals, and plants ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... hold water can, of course, be readily converted into an aquarium. But as we desire a clear view of the contents at all times, glass is the best material. And since glass globes refract the light irregularly and magnify and distort whatever is within them, we shall find an advantage in having the sides of the aquarium parallel and the form rectangular. As the weight of the aquarium, when filled with water, is enormous,—far more than we should at first imagine,—it follows that it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... the double refractions of the glass and water represent them, when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours engages the fancy ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... In a storm of newly patented virtue they declaim against the "big" ones. They fail to admit that they merely want to usurp instead of to magnify Government. The political machine of the country is regarded as a part of the machine by which special interests prosper. In its efforts to repudiate such a connection Governments resort to the trick of clamouring on behalf ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... is dear remains as it was, and it is my delight to remember and magnify what it is to me. My friends laugh when I say it is better to be remembered in Bellingham than to be famous in ten cities. It has been my misfortune never to have lived in any other place that in a few years, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... necessarily obscure and only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was an interval of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... the dining-room; there is a table spread with the graces of the Spirit, the fruits of the garden of the Lord. There Christ and the Christian sit down to dine together. While the glory of the one lights up the room, the holy life of the other perfumes it. O God, my soul doth magnify thee for the ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... signalized their names, will prove that other nations need not be discouraged from the like attempts by the consciousness of inability; for surely it is not very difficult to aggravate trifling misfortunes, to magnify familiar incidents, repeat adulatory professions, accumulate servile hyperboles, and produce all that can be found in the despicable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... of England, will be to unite with the Greeks, take Constantinople, and subdue all Asia. I intend to be a warrior, a conqueror; Napoleon's name shall vail to mine; and enthusiasts, instead of visiting his rocky grave, and exalting the merits of the fallen, shall adore my majesty, and magnify my illustrious achievements." ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... But what is one man beside two troops which come shortly in two solid chunks, with horses snorting and sending the dry landscape in a dusty pall for a quarter of a mile in the rear? It is good—ah! it is worth any one's while; but stop and think, what if we could magnify that? Tut, tut! as I said before, that only happens once in a generation. Adobe doesn't dream; it ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... Maysville. General Morgan instructed these officers to accomplish their respective commissions thoroughly but promptly, to create as much excitement as possible, occasion the concentration of forces already in the State at points widely apart, to magnify his strength and circulate reports which would bewilder and baffle any attempt to calculate his movements and to meet him within three or four ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... Daedalus, in spite of the impossible form in which it is presented, may rank with the story of the Saracen of Constantinople, or with that of Simon the Magician. A simple folk would naturally idealise the man and magnify his exploit, as they magnified the deeds of some strong man to make the legends of Hercules, and there, full-grown from a mere legend, is the first record of a pioneer of flying. Such a theory is ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... SOULS COME TOGETHER.—When two souls come together, each seeking to magnify the other, each in subordinate sense worshiping the other, each help the other; the two flying together so that each wing-beat of the one helps each wing-beat of the other—when two souls come together thus, they are lovers. They who unitedly ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... of those multiply'd, magnify'd, and Singularly-stinged Afflictions, with which aged, or dying Saints frequently have their Death Prefaced, and their Age embittered. When the Saints of God are going to leave the World, it is usually a more Stormy World with them, than ever it ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... whether on the Northern or Southern side, tacitly united in driving all legislation or congressional business from its legitimate halls into the procrastinating by-paths, in order that they might make speeches and magnify themselves unto Buncombe, and be glorified by the local home press because of their devotion to—the party! The party! That was always the word. Where are these men of froth and wind now,—these heroes of the stump and the bar-room? Passing away into nothing, at headlong ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... excuse, even partially. Nevertheless, the far greater part of the Angels remained constant in the service of their Saviour. Therefore God, who had so amply glorified His mercy in the work of the creation of the Angels, would also magnify His justice; and in His righteous indignation resolved for ever to abandon that accursed band of traitors, who in their rebellion had so villainously ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... averse from it.'[FN22] Is it therefore in thy competence, O Commander of the Faithful, to comply with the letter of the King of the heretics and send me back to the land of the schismatics who deny The Faith and give partners to the All-wise King, who magnify the Cross and bow down before idols and believe in the divinity of Jesus, for all he was only a creature? An thou deal with me thus, O Viceregent of Allah, I will lay hold upon thy skirts on the Day of Muster before the Lord and make my complaint of thee to thy cousin the Apostle of Allah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... make slaveholders see that there is any material difference between slavery and freedom; but when they have once renounced slavery, they will magnify this distinction more than any other class ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... eighteen months, received his license as a St. Louis and New Orleans pilot, and was accepted by his old chief, Bixby, as full partner on an important boat. In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain makes the period of his study from two to two and a half years, but this is merely an attempt to magnify his dullness. He was, in fact, an apt pupil and a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear, and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. "Our eyes are made the fools" of our other faculties. This is the universal ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... minister of the colony had engrossed so universally the public favour and esteem. The Governor and his adherents found it necessary to sow the seeds of division among his followers, and, from maxims of policy, to magnify his failings, in order to ruin his great ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... confirmed this amazing story of the performances at Domremy, and gave me many particulars of the petty persecutions to which the Sisters who conduct schools all over France are subjected. The schools are open at all hours to the invasion of Inspectors, who magnify their office too often in the eyes of the children by treating the teachers (lay as well as religious) with the sort of amiable condescension which marks the demeanour of an agent of the octroi overhauling the basket of a peasant-woman ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... her, that the sermon, and the man's happiness were intended to show her how much she had lost since she was cut off from "grace" by Satan dwelling in her body. Again she dreamt of a near relative whom she heard singing, "And they all speak in tongues to magnify the Lord." This brought sorrow to her of which she was conscious during the dream and after she awoke as she thought Satan was putting this before her to show her what she had lost. In another dream she saw three unpleasant looking men talking together. The worst looking of them of Jewish ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... which the expeditionary army had hewed out for itself, and at every step which brought them nearer to the scene of action, the disaster of the fearful day seemed to magnify. The day after the defeat a number of the miserable fugitives from the fatal battle of the 9th of July had reached Dunbar's camp, fifty miles from the field. Thither poor Harry and his companions rode, stopping stragglers, asking news, giving money, getting ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... 'tis done, mock on. Not unto man Is my complaint. For were it so, my heart Would sink in darker depths of hopeless woe. Say ye that earth's 'prosperity' rewards The righteous man? Why do the wicked live, Grow old, and magnify themselves in power? Their offspring flourish round them, their abodes Are safe from fear. Their cattle multiply And widely o'er the hills and pastures green Wander their healthful herds. Forth like a flock They send their little ones, with dance and ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "Oh, ye Winds of God," sang the unseen voices: "bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever!" ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... the fascinations of any theory of heredity. Every thoughtful observer knows something of the seductions of this subject either from experience or from observation. In every subject of research there is danger of claiming too much in order to magnify the theory. This is emphatically true of this theory. Its devotees note the hits but not the misses. "It took five generations of cultured clergymen to produce an Emerson." Undoubtedly; but what of the sixth and seventh generations? "Darwin's greatness ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... me not be thought to magnify so small a feat as the ascent of Owl's Head, a mountain which the ladies of the Appalachian Club may be presumed to look upon as hardly better than a hillock. The guide-book's "thirty rods" have betrayed me into saying more than I intended. It would have been enough had I mentioned that the way ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... impressed with the importance of national credit, or because their citizens have little, if any, immediate interest in the question, feel an indifference, if not a repugnance, to the payment of the domestic debt at any rate. These would be inclined to magnify the difficulties of a distribution. Others of them, a numerous body of whose citizens are creditors to the public beyond proportion of the State in the total amount of the national debt, would be strenuous for some equitable and effective provision. The procrastinations of ...
— The Federalist Papers

... space of twenty-four hours. This being related to him, he, notwithstanding the importunity of his friends to detain him, determined to go there, saying, "They are now in troubles, and need comfort. Perhaps this hand of God will make them now to magnify and reverence the word of God, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... the Union came to be identified almost completely in England and Scotland with support of the Ulster Loyalists. It was to this aspect of the case that Mr. Kipling gave prominence in the poem published on the day of the Balmoral meeting,[40] although no one was less prone than he to magnify a "side-show" in Imperial policy; and it was the same note that again was sounded on the eve of the Covenant by another distinguished English poet. The general feeling of bewilderment and indignation that the only part of Ireland which had consistently upheld the British connection should ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... characters George Eliot makes of very great importance. She dwells upon the natural scenery which they love, but especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and the perpetual influence it has upon the whole of life. Mr. James Sully has clearly interpreted her thought on this subject, and pointed out its engrossing interest ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... The noble Margaret hath, by her wondrous art, together with the exercise of prayer and fasting, fenced us about as with a triple barrier, that no earthly might shall overcome. A power attends us that will magnify our cause, and lay our foes prostrate. 'Tis a mystery even to us, but a being appears unexpectedly at times, and by his counsels we are guided. We know not whence he comes, nor whither he goes; but his path is with us, and his presence, though generally invisible, not without terror, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... come again. Referring to that time the prophet Zechariah calls it a time of trembling, the time of a terrible siege. But he tells us that "The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the House of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, do not magnify themselves against Judah." Thus we learn that the Jews, who have been so long despised and bereft of a king, country, and government, shall see through the great mystery of Providence first. The House of David is found in the royal family of England. The Jews, seeing this, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... behalf of freedom, fellowship and character in religion. I reverenced its saints and prophets, and longed to follow in their train. Hence the eagerness with which I sought preparation for the Unitarian ministry—that I might serve the church—advance its glory and magnify its work. ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes

... experimental example, although necessarily imperfect In many ways, burns with a remarkably steady light, of great brilliancy, which is assured by the fact that the products of combustion are robbed of all their heat to magnify the useful effect, so that the hand may be borne with ease over the outlet of the chimney. With respect to the endurance of the apparatus, it will be sufficient to remark that there is nothing in the gas or air heating arrangements ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... words of the address sent by the colony to King William of Orange, on his accession: "Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery." We wonder how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion of Connecticut? There is nothing more to add on the situation of the Catholics in the land ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... a murder or any other crime had been committed in it, or when a pyx or relic was desecrated, as being holy in themselves, yet become unholy in use. Thus this point is easy and clear if only the language is understood, that to hallow is the same as in our idiom to praise, magnify, and honor both ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... condemn such names upon the gates Of princely piles of luxury and ease, Where the powdered footman silently awaits My lord's commands and wishes, till he sees What he can do to magnify or please; Who sternly checks the smile that he would hide, And reverently bows with straightened knees When perhaps his lord is pleased to coincide, And waits for the ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... in rupture as in failing eyesight. And everybody knows that one man may need very powerful glasses, while another needs glasses which magnify only slightly; one may need a double lens, while another needs only a single lens; one may need convex lenses, ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons

... a brave and worthy woman, deserving to be remembered and respected, for her virtues should not be hidden and kept dark, but publicly blazoned to the world. You will shortly hear, if you will, in this story something which will increase and magnify her fame. ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... sufferings, and signifying his willingness to resign his position as councillor to the First Presidency, but not concealing the pain and humiliation that such a step would cause him. Smith became magnanimous. "He expressed entire willingness to have Elder Rigdon retain his station, provided he would magnify his office, and walk and conduct himself in all honesty, righteousness and integrity; but signified his lack of confidence in his integrity and steadfastness."* This incident once more furnishes proof of some great power which Smith held over Rigdon that induced the latter ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Finally they were to be admonished not to believe their teachers in anything which was against the declarations of the Church catholic. Such was the form in which the first draft of the Confutation was couched. Everywhere the tendency was apparent to magnify the differences, make invidious inferences, cast suspicion on their opponents, and place them in a bad light with the Emperor and the majority. This was not the case in the answer ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... sat up. There was a chance that he might find Hugh awake and on duty. If so his cast-iron lordship might yet be browbeaten, or wheedled, into inaction. Or if sleeping he might yet be circumvented. Was he worth circumventing? How absurdly troubles magnify on a waking pillow. Despise your enemy and sleep! Well—hardly. Let him do that, especially when ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable



Words linked to "Magnify" :   hyperbolize, photography, misinform, dramatise, brag, magnifier, magnitude, gasconade, embroider, overemphasize, magnification, enlarge, mislead, overdraw, aggrandise, overstress, bluster, swash, picture taking, increase, overemphasise, blow up, blow, aggrandize, shoot a line, dramatize



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