"Magnify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of years. Time has had no other effect on my recollection, than raising my estimate of his genius. I admit, too, that in judging of an extraordinary man, time may exalt the image as well as confuse the likeness. The haze of years may magnify all the nobler outlines, while it conceals all that would enfeeble their dignity. To me, his eloquence now resembles those midsummer night dreams, in which all is contrast, and all is magical. Shapes, diminutive and grotesque for a moment, and then suddenly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... me, yer great coward; yer've killed me!" wailed Pete again, excitement having probably acted upon his eyes after the fashion attributed to a horse's, which are said to magnify largely, and made ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... than when he is protecting the proprieties of fashion. The censorship works well in England on the whole, because it has almost always been worked by capable men of the world who understand that they are not dealing with children, who do not magnify their office, and do not strain after an austere authority which it would be quite impossible for ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... has a visible and measurable circular outline. This feature a star does not exhibit. The stars are indeed so remote that no matter how large they may be intrinsically, they only exhibit radiant points of light, which the utmost powers of the telescope fail to magnify into objects with an appreciable diameter. The older and well-known planets, such as Jupiter and Mars, possess discs, which, though not visible to the unaided eye, were clearly enough discernible with the slightest telescopic power. But ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... in vain, to lay aside for the moment your inherited timidities and conventions. I ask you to lay aside pride, which is the devil itself and the cause of most unhappiness. I ask you to rise to the height of a great conception. To 'magnify' God is a common phrase in our observances. Then let us truly magnify Him—not minify, as the theologians do. If God is anything more than a social fetich, then He must be so much more that He includes and explains everything. It may sound inconceivable ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... in doing this, (for it was the same stake at which Miller and Cooper were burnt,) and she at first wiped it; but directly after again welcomed and embraced it as the "sweet cross of Christ." After the tormentors had kindled the fire, she said, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Saviour." Then crossing her hands upon her breast, and looking upwards with the utmost serenity, she stood the fiery furnace. Her hands continued gradually to rise till the sinews were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... arch-schemer were using the grievances of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... that when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling, they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to doubt, and this, when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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; ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... humble source. Such are suggested by this hollow roar of a subterranean cataract, where the mighty stream of a kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate, and is seen no more on earth. Listen awhile to its voice of mystery; and fancy will magnify it, till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another sound,—the rumbling of wheels,—as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the pavements, and splashes through the mud and water of the road. All night long, the poor passengers will ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which God has so graciously provided in the great sacrifice. It is fearful to see the enemies of the cross increasing and rushing on to their coming doom. What is to be our attitude? It is for us to glory more and more in the cross of Christ. We must exalt and magnify the Person and Work of our blessed Lord as never before. The more He is rejected by the world, His blessed work on the cross disowned in such latter day delusions as the new theology, Christian Science and the numerous other systems, the more we ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... These miserables, 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 speed, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always a surprise. See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation. I saw nothing like it in the Adirondacks, nor in Canada. Absolutely without stain or hint of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so that the bed of the stream and the fish in it appear deceptively near. It is rare to find even a trout stream that is not a little "off color," as they say of diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I am writing have the genuine ray; it is the undimmed ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... that affair at Delhi, I felt that there was really no occasion for you to have said anything about it; but it did me a great deal of good. She made much more of it than there was any occasion for; but, you know, when women are inclined to take a pleasant view of a thing, they will magnify molehills into mountains." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... which the duke was glad to profit. With his own manifold interests, it was impossible for him to be present in his various capitals as often as was demanded by the usage of the diverse individual seigniories. It was politic, therefore, to magnify the representative capacity of his son and of his consort in order to obtain the grants and aides which certain of his subjects declared could be given only when requested orally by their sovereign lord. Thus, in ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... may elect to pour his spirit? Perchance in mercy I may be spared to behold thee a faithful though humble preacher of the Word. Anne, thy wife, often hath likened me to a great light upon a high hill-top, shining in the darkness far away. I would not magnify my powers, but not to all is it given to be mighty captains of a host. Yet, according to thy gifts might thy work be, and a little candle shining in a darkened ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... more true and natural, if 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 ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the 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 a gaol-fever bring my career to an ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... important and interesting is to get at the truth about a man. In the investigation of character there is nothing to be said for being a partisan and for indulging in special pleading, so as to minimise faults and magnify virtues. My own belief is that Byron was an essentially worthless character, the prey of impulse, the slave of desire, thirsting for distinction above everything. There is nothing in his letters or ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... answered Roger, "have you forgot that 'tis I owe thanks to you, that you seek to magnify my simple act into so great deserving? They that of their kindness cheer my little suffering Christie's lonely life, deserve all the good that I can render them. My little maid prayed me to say unto ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... just quite thus constituted. "Concentration," says Mr Pinero, "is first, second, and last in it," and he goes on thus, as reported in the Scotsman, to show Stevenson's defect and mistake and, as is not, of course, unnatural, to magnify the greatness and grandeur of the style of work in which he has ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... for is the best service of the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin. It is strongest among old patriarchal races; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in America today in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Sonnenuntergaenge."[195] 1854: "Gottlob, dass ich bei all meinem Leid sehr heiteren Gemuetes bin, und die lustigsten Gedanken springen mir durchs Hirn."[196] Much of this sort of thing was no doubt nicely calculated for effect, and yet these and similar passages show that he was not inclined to magnify his physical afflictions either in his own eyes or in the eyes of others. Nor is he absolutely unreconciled to his fate: "Es ist mir nichts geglueckt in dieser Welt, aber es haette mir doch noch schlimmer ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... direction in local affairs may become unnecessary and obsolete. I invite the attention, not of Congress, but of the people of the United States, to the causes and effects of these unhappy questions. Is there not a disposition on one side to magnify wrongs and outrages, and on the other side to belittle them or justify them? If public opinion could be directed to a correct survey of what is and to rebuking wrong and aiding the proper authorities in punishing it, a better state of feeling would ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... innumerable bores scattered through the length 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... presented him with 57 children, the fruits of 21 pregnancies. She had quadruplets four times, triplets seven times, and twins thrice. By his second wife he had 15 children, twins six times, and triplets once. This man, accordingly, was the father of 72 children, and, to magnify the wonder, all the children were alive at the time of presentation. Herman, in some Russian statistics, relates the instance of Fedor Vassilet, a peasant of the Moscow Jurisdiction, who in 1872, at the age of seventy-five years, was the father of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... will magnify the small parts of an insect a great deal. It will show you all the tiny hairs on the body, and the little rings and the feelers and the facets of the eyes, and many ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... makes according to His perfection the least little thing that He makes. The tiniest fly, the smallest animalcule, the dust of a butterfly's wing, however highly you may magnify them, are seen to be absolutely perfect. Should not the little things of our daily life be as relatively perfect in the case of each Christian as the lesser creations of GOD are absolutely perfect? Ought we not to glorify GOD in the formation of each letter ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... of difficulty will, by those that have never considered words beyond their popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man willing to magnify his labours, and procure veneration to his studies by involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure to those that have not learned it: this uncertainty of terms, and commixture of ideas, is well known to those who have joined philosophy with ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... of trying to minimize the effect of profit charging to diminish consumption, they deliberately sought to magnify it to the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... enlarge; dilate &c (expand) 194; grow, wax, get ahead. gain strength; advance; run up, shoot up; rise; ascend &c 305; sprout &c 194. aggrandize; raise, exalt; deepen, heighten; strengthen; intensify, enhance, magnify, redouble; aggravate, exaggerate; exasperate, exacerbate; add fuel to the flame, oleum addere camino [Lat.], superadd &c (add) 37; spread &c (disperse) 73. Adj. increased &c v.; on the increase, undiminished; additional ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Thirteen thousand persons were in the City cathedral. The pew for the Queen and the Prince was enclosed by a brass railing. The Te Deum was sung by a picked choir. There was a special prayer, "We praise and magnify Thy glorious name for that Thou hast raised Thy servant Albert Edward Prince of Wales from the bed of sickness." The sermon was preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The return was led by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to the bounds of the City. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... moment to embrace an opportunity, honorable and lucrative, which should present itself. There was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. Their work is fast being transferred to the hands ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... tent, flapping loudly in the wind, occupied an empty lot in the heart of the village—a saloon on either side, and a lumberman's boarding house across the way, where the "artist" was at dinner, pending which I waited for him at the door of his canvas gallery. He evidently seeks to magnify his calling, does this raw youth of the camera, by affecting what he conceives to be the traditional garb of the artistic Bohemian, but which resembles more closely the costume of the minstrel stage—a battered silk hat, surmounting flowing locks glistening with hair-oil; ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... a phrase or two," was the answer, spoken gravely but quite calmly. "I would not speak words of which I am ashamed; at the same time, it is well in these perilous days to use all caution, for an enemy can well distort and magnify the words he hears, till they sound like rank heresy. For myself I have no fear. I prize not my life greatly, though to die as a heretic, cut off from the Church of Christ, is a fearful thing to think of. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... heard my Lord Barkeley tell Sir G. Carteret that he hath letters from France that the King hath unduked twelve Dukes, only to show his power and to crush his nobility, who he said he did see had heretofore laboured to cross him. And this my Lord Barkeley did mightily magnify, as a sign of a brave and vigorous mind, that what he saw fit to be done he dares do. At night, after business done at my office, home to supper and to bed. I have forgot to set down a very remarkable passage ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the one great boyhood sorrow, a sorrow which had been allowed unduly to magnify itself with the passing years, he had never been brought face to face with any of the hardnesses which alone can make the soldier of life entirely intrepid in the shock of battle. In the backward glance he saw that his homeless ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... those who were filled with zeal for good works were gathered together in great bands, and each band wished to magnify its work. In every way, to all men who asked, help was given. They searched out the lame and the blind, and brought them that they might perforce be healed. Cup after cup of cold water was given to the little ones, even to those who might bring water for themselves. They cared for the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... rapture of the one, and the perfect and perpetual music of the other. We know that He who has given us so much will not stay His hand until He has perfected that which concerns us. We know that He who has taught our dumb hearts to magnify His name will not cease till 'out of the lips of babes and sucklings, He has perfected praise.' We know that the pilgrims in whose hearts are the ways are blessed, and we are sure that a fuller blessedness must belong to those who have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... paragraph, the last number being 3362. In 1859 he collected and published a fourth volume of papers, under the title, 'Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics.' Thus did this apostle of experiment illustrate its power, and magnify his office. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... 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 ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... more discompose Marcius than all the rest, as he had not anticipated he should ever be questioned on that subject, and, therefore, was less provided with any satisfactory answer to it on the sudden. And when, by way of excuse, he began to magnify the merits of those who had been partakers with him in the action, those that had stayed at home, being more numerous than the other, interrupted him with the outcries. In conclusion, when they came to vote, a majority of three tribes condemned ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... far more valuable than that of the specialist. And this may be owing largely to the point of view, as well as to the training, of each. The specialist, perhaps, is an enthusiast or a devotee to his science, and so apt to give undue importance to the details of it, or to magnify some one feature: the librarian, on the other hand, who is nothing if not comprehensive, takes the larger view of the wide field of literature on each subject, and his suggestions concerning sources ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... 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 me a portion of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... he had scarcely frequented the house long 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 ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... existence around a single form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach and to magnify by detaching is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an object,—so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle,—the painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... well expressed in the 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 of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... but little sympathy from my immediate family. My father is as ignorant as a child of what we poor housekeepers require in a domestic; and my Aunt Lina, though kind-hearted and well-wishing, is in equally as blissful a state. A very indifferent servant, who happened to please her fancy, she would magnify into a very excellent one; then, being rather opinionative and "set," as maiden ladies are apt to be when they pass the fatal threshold of forty, I despaired of ever convincing her to the contrary. "However," said I to myself, "I will not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... ordinarily attaches to the discovery of some vast region of the earth than to the finding or exploring of a limited coast, district, or river-course. There are, however, some instances in which geographical conditions or historical developments magnify the seemingly lesser achievements. This has been the case with Henry Hudson's timely exploration of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... 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 his mother—the care ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... our foe. Every step must be preordained and provided for in the mind. Hence also the fact that to vanquish one mile in the woods seems equal to compassing three in the open country. The furlongs are ambushed, and we magnify them. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... her own heart, knew the ups and downs of it. She alone could feel the want of any faith remaining, the ache of ever stretching forth and laying hold on nothing. Her mind had never been encouraged—as with maidens nowadays—to-magnify itself, and soar, and scorn the heart that victuals it. All the deeper was her trouble, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 which ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and I think that in the case of all great men we like to let our wonder mount and mount, till it leaves the truth behind, and honesty is pretty much cast out as ballast. A wise criticism will no more magnify Shakespeare because he is already great than it will magnify any less man. But we are loaded down with the responsibility of finding him all we have been told he is, and we must do this or suspect ourselves of a want of taste, a want of sensibility. At the same time, we may ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... serves only to add to the charm of private life and to secure social success. Where it is united with real talents it not only enables its possessor to use these talents to the greatest advantage; it also often leads those about him greatly to magnify their amount. The presence or absence of this gift is one of the chief causes why the relative value of different men is often so differently judged by contemporaries and by posterity; by those who have come in direct personal contact ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... these is sure to be,—those aspects of opposition which such a person can occupy, are limited by the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connexion along which he is able to radiate any essential influence whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. Circumstances may magnify his importance for the moment; but, after all, any cable which he carries out upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud arising. Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an adult or responsible man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... death, he established in the world the kingdom which for long ages had been preparing; if it makes known to us the messages he brought of pardon and salvation; if it gives us the record of the planting and training of his church in the early ages, is there any need that I should go about to praise and magnify its worth to the children of men? If light is worth anything to those who sit in darkness, or hope to those who are oppressed with tormenting doubt; if wisdom is to be desired by those who are in perplexity, and comfort by those who are in trouble, and peace by those whose hearts ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... like a bell and its echo. Would the birth of Jesus, the character of Jesus, have been possible unless there had been the virginal and expectant soul of such a woman as Mary, ready to welcome His coming with her song? "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." Does not the advent of a higher manhood always wait for the hope and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... labor and ingenuity as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette—of endeavors, we repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct, and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify and perpetuate some grand ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... I think, but I’ll tell you, if you want to know, that I call it infamous, outrageous, that a man should leave a ridiculous will of that sort behind him. All the old money-bags who pile up fortunes magnify the importance of their money. They imagine that every kindness, every ordinary courtesy shown them, is merely a bid for a slice of the cake. I’m disappointed in my grandfather. He was a splendid old man, though God knows he had ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... I suppose you'd magnify me into a sullen old bear, as bad as Ketch, the porter. You may accept it. Stop!" thundered Mr. Galloway, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his Master was, to him, reward enough. If it meant sickness, suffering, separation from those he loved, and death at last alone in the wilderness, these were just the incidents of no sacrifice, nothing to boast of or to magnify him in the eyes of his fellow-men. Yet, even from his own matter-of-fact account, we can see how, again and again, his cool courage saved his own life and the lives of the men who ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... vice, and haunted with feverish thoughts, which he tried to forget in amusements. It has been the fashion to take his account of himself literally, and represent him as the worst of reprobates, in order to magnify the effects of his conversion, and perhaps to make intelligible to his admiring followers the reproaches which he heaps upon himself. They may have felt that they could not be wrong in explaining his own language in the only sense in which they could attach a meaning to it. Yet, sinner though ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... 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
... fundamental principle to be observed by the writer of 'slams' is that he must resolutely shut his eyes to any qualities which appeal, even to him, as good qualities, while dwelling with ferocious zest upon every point that he can possibly magnify into a flaw. Or he may even fly at one bound to a pinnacle of wisdom by basing his criticism entirely upon the first chapter or the last chapter of a book, or the first act or the last act of a play. Or he may win ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... scratch; I've got a real deep cut." My cut being more important than your scratch makes me, for the moment, more important than you, and gives me a chance to boast over you. Older people are known sometimes to magnify their own ailments, with the apparent aim of enhancing their own importance. Perhaps the same sort of motive underlies ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... spare them, as a man spareth his own son." [Mal. 3:17] Wherefore it is needful that we give thanks to the Blessed Majesty, Who shows Himself so gracious and merciful toward us poor condemned worms, and magnify ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... overcome of Satan and of his servants, but rather let me triumph over them, that I, through strong faith and help of the blessed angels, having the victory of the hellish army, may with a joyful heart say, Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?—and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy Name. Amen." Parker Society, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... experience. The more the former was exalted, the more the latter was depreciated. Since experience was identified with what men do and suffer in particular and changing situations of life, doing shared in the philosophic depreciation. This influence fell in with many others to magnify, in higher education, all the methods and topics which involved the least use of sense-observation and bodily activity. The modern age began with a revolt against this point of view, with an appeal to experience, and an attack upon so-called ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... being an "old maid," how can she endure this? I answer, let her not, in the first place, unduly magnify this reproach. I know that certain charges are preferred against "old maids," as this class are ignominiously termed, which do much to strengthen the impression just spoken of. They are said to possess an inordinate curiosity. Addison, like many others, alleges that old maids are given ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... the faithful and obedient to become the sons of God and coheirs with Christ; whom we confess and adore one God in the Trinity of the holy Name. For He Himself has said by the prophet: "Call upon me in the day of thy trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt magnify me." And again he says: "It is honorable to reveal and ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... German Empire has no other force of cohesion except such as lies in militarism, William is necessarily compelled to do everything to magnify and increase it. Whereas we in France are free to develop the quality rather than the quantity of our army, Germany, finding the elements of cohesion only in her military agglomerations is compelled to increase unceasingly the number ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... flowers and foliage of our delight in nature: I could show a hundred fibres leading from the depths of our old literature up to the great root. Nor is it surprising that, with his age about him, he too should be found tending to magnify, not God's Word, but his works, above all his name: we have beauty for loveliness; beneficence for tenderness. I have wondered whether one great part of Napoleon's mission was not to wake people from this idolatry of the power ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... mankind, as the only infallible criterion on subjects in which it had formerly been made the standard. That his meaning was excellent, no one can doubt; whether he discovered the right remedy for the harm which he was desirous of removing, is much more questionable. To magnify any branch of human knowledge beyond its just importance may, indeed, tend to weaken the force of religious faith; but many acute metaphysicans have been good Christians; and before the question thus agitated can be set at rest, we must suppose a certain ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... boasts a British heart, that repines at the success and prosperity of his country? Such there are, (Oh, shame to patriotism, and reproach to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens, magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our government, and scatter the seeds of dissatisfaction through the land. Such domestic traitors are doubly the objects ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... ha, ha, ha. I was a talking about something that I was a going for to do some other time, sir.—Doesn't future magnify some other time, eigh? ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... let us praise the Lord most high, And strive His Name to magnify On this great day through earth and ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... called worry, but anxiety. There is a very great difference between worry and concentrated study of a vexing problem. The characteristic of worry is a tendency to brood anxiously over fancied troubles. The typical worrying mind will take mere trifles and magnify them until they become monumental difficulties. Many acquire the habit of going over and over again, and still again, the various unpleasant experiences which they have passed through during life. This inclination ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... nonsense, 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
... out what you want with this great instrument," I said. "A common pocket lens would do all that you require. Besides, a six-inch objective will not magnify more than two ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... 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
... 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, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... in themselves, so to say that God could perform them, would not be to magnify his power, but to expose our own absurdity. When we affirm, that omnipotence cannot cause a thing to be and not to be at one and the same time, or cannot make two and two equal to five, we do not set limits to it; we simply declare that such things are not the objects ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... polychrome clay; it brandished its mane of hair, and its sides resembled a pair of bellows. These two images he placed in a corner of the room. Then he extinguished the lamps, permitting the glowing embers to throw a dim light around the room and to magnify the objects which were almost ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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
... 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 ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... that to appear which you have undertaken, first, that it is an art, and an art worth the learning, I shall beg that I may attend you a day or two a-fishing, and that I may become your scholar, and be instructed in the art itself which you so much magnify. ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... statistically what is in motion; and in the process things assume a weight in our mind which they have not in reality. For this reason a man, who by his profession is concerned with any particular aspect of life, is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stress upon facts he loses his hold upon truth. A detective may have the opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses his sense of their relative places in the whole social economy. When science collects facts to illustrate ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... any precedent to guide, and considering 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 ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, That the Christian faith, had given up good men, in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust. Which he spake, because indeed there was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth. Therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, it is good, to take knowledge of the errors of an habit so excellent. Seek the good of other men, but be ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the Irish were hearing Mass. In this instance, as in so many others, it is impossible to ascertain correctly the numerical force of each army. The historians on either side were naturally anxious to magnify the numbers of their opponents, and to lessen their own. It is at least certain, that on this, as on other occasions, the Irish were miserably deficient in all the appliances of the art of war, while the English were admirably supplied. The most probable estimate ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... bent towards culture which shall abide by them and raise them above the work-a-day world which will demand so large a share of their time and strength. The mechanic, the farmer, the man in any walk of life, who has early formed good habits of reading, is the one who will magnify his calling, and occupy the highest positions in it. And to the thousands of young people, in whose homes there is none of the atmosphere of culture or of the appliances for it, the public library ought to furnish the means of keeping pace intellectually with the more favored children of homes where ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... 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, ...
— 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 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, which is his own goodness, by which the greatness of ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... to-night to glorify the Dutch. Fortunately for us, to do this we have not by the addition of so much as a jot or a tittle to magnify history. The facts are sufficient to justify our boast and fortify our pride. We need to detract nothing from other nationalities that have contributed much to the formation of our modern national conglomerate, although it is easily seen that the superior qualities of other nations ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... many newspaper versions of the treatment of colored cadets, and of Smith in particular would not have been so convinced? When, therefore, any affront or any thing seemingly of that nature was offered me, I have been disposed, naturally I think, to unduly magnify it, because I expected it. This was hasty and unjust, and so I admit, now that I am better informed. What was apparently done to incommode or discourage me has been shown to have been done either for my own benefit or for some other purpose, not to my harm. In every single instance I ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... were, of course, some battles fought during his reign," said Harvey, "but I fancy the accounts of them were much exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired that it was copied ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... busy with her ladyship's nerves, and too ignorant of French, to gather enough for his refutation, had she wished for it; and, in fact, she had regarded him as the only safeguard of the party, devoutly believing all his reports, and now she was equally willing to magnify her own adventures. What a hero Delaford was all over the terrace and its vicinity! People looked out to see the defender of the British name; and Charlotte Arnold mended stockings, and wondered whether her cruelty had made him so ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sat down and ran my fingers over The keys of the piano; and my mood At length expressed itself in that wild burst Of a melodious anguish, which Edgardo Gives vent to in 'Lucia.' Words could add Nothing to magnify the utter heart-break Of that despair; and Donizetti's score Has made the cry audible through the ages. Less from the instrument than from my heart Was wrung the ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... pipe and sing, And make them merrie with their fooleries; 320 They cherelie chaunt, and rymes at randon fling, The fruitfull spawne of their ranke fantasies; They feede the eares of fooles with flattery, And good men blame, and losels* magnify. [* Losels, worthless fellows.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the immense possibilities which it involves; without even being chargeable with a natural vanity, we may say, that to no country on the face of the earth have they ever been more fitted than to this. For, my friends, we know that it is a dictate of our nature to magnify that which is our own. However insignificant it really is, man spreads an ideal glory over the land of his birth. Perhaps its historical importance compensates for its geographical narrowness, or its material poverty is hidden by ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... about religious doctrines. Very often the vague feeling of restlessness incident to adolescence is interpreted as due to sin or estrangement from God, and after conversion the convert is, for purposes of self-glorification, given to magnify the benefits and comforts derived from his religious convictions. The magnitude of the change increases the value of the convert, and with well-known characters there has been as great an exaggeration of vices before conversion as of virtues subsequently. The way in which evangelical ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow and at some time he should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... our heads before Thee, and we laud And magnify thy name Almighty God! But man is thy most awful instrument In working ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett |
