"Aggrandisement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of how few, alas! to judge from our modern creed on such matters, must the really important and distinctive points of them find an echo! To how few does this whole Exhibition seem to have been anything but a matter of personal gain or curiosity, for national aggrandisement, insular self-glorification, and selfish—I had almost said, treacherous—rivalry with the very foreigners whom we invited as ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... quotes from Professor Gardiner, 'coolly dissect a man's thoughts as they please; and label them like specimens in a naturalist's cabinet. Such a thing, they argue, was done for mere personal aggrandisement; such a thing for national objects, such a thing from high religious motives. In real life we may be sure it was not ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... with the same ambitions as himself. The double marriage of John with Margaret, the sister of William VI of Holland, and of William VI with Margaret of Burgundy, largely helped forward their projects of aggrandisement. Philip the Good was, however, a much abler ruler than his father, a far-seeing statesman, who pursued his plans with a patient and unscrupulous pertinacity, of which a conspicuous example is to be found in his long protracted struggle with his cousin Jacoba, the only child and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... air in the world. The geese were the victims of this imaginative effort of Mr. Curtenty's. They took him seriously as a gooseherd. These fourteen intelligences, each with an object in life, each bent on self-aggrandisement and the satisfaction of desires, began to follow the line of least resistance in regard to the superior intelligence unseen but felt behind them, feigning, as geese will, that it suited them so to submit, and that in reality they were still quite independent. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... no right to blame the continental Powers," continued the Colonel, "for using our defeats for their own aggrandisement. There is no Power at whose expense we have not grown great. We took all our possessions by force of arms from the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the French; we have always opposed Russia, since she began to develop her power. We supported Turkey, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking, ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for its own sake, just as ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... soliloquised, 'is the result of opinion, and to new-model opinion would be to new-model society. Knowledge is power; it is in the hands of a few, who employ it to mislead the many, for their own selfish purposes of aggrandisement and appropriation. What if it were in the hands of a few who should employ it to lead the many? What if it were universal, and the multitude were enlightened? No. The many must be always in leading-strings; but let them have wise and honest conductors. A few to think, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... threw the reins on the neck of his choler, and, as tradition reports, did then disinherit her for ever in favour of Sir Oskatell. How far the latter might be privy to this resolve, or whether Sir Thomas, goaded on aforetime to the aggrandisement of his name, seized the present opportunity only as it served his purpose, both history and tradition leave us without the means of deciding. There does, however, seem reason to suspect some unfair solicitations practised ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the hour is so delayed; that narrowness, and selfishness, and self-aggrandisement still flourish, to the eternal cost of those of England's mothers who bring weaklings into the world, through the hard conditions ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... that annihilation of one half of mankind would be a small price to pay for conversion of the other moiety into citizens of a world-wide Red Republic; or those admirers of Prince Bismarck, who, holding national aggrandisement to be the national summum bonum, deem the most solemn treaties that might impede it to be obstacles which it is obligatory on a patriot to set aside? Will not the effects of any given cause vary with the changes in the circumstances in which the cause acts? May it not easily ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the happiest and luckiest man in the world. And likewise so gracious and kindly was she to her husband's vassals, that there was none of them but loved her more dearly than himself, and was zealous to do her honour, and prayed for her welfare and prosperity and aggrandisement, and instead of, as erstwhile, saying that Gualtieri had done foolishly to take her to wife, now averred that he had not his like in the world for wisdom and discernment, for that, save to him, her noble ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... fattening upon the labor of others, are now about to unite in order to make the reign of each perpetual. Is there an independent American to be found, who will become the recreant slave to such an unholy combination? Is this another compromise to barter the liberties of the country for personal aggrandisement? "Resistance to tyrants ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... treaty of 1845, binding the 'high contracting Powers' to refrain from territorial aggrandisement (much like forbidding a growing boy to grow), expired in 1855. Since that time, whilst we have refrained even from abating the nuisance of native wars, our very lively neighbours have annexed the Casamansa River, with the fine coffee-lands extending from the Nunez southwards to the Ponga River, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Napoleon, the power which Louis XIV. had acquired and was acquiring at the commencement of the eighteenth century, was almost equally menacing to the general liberties of Europe. If tested by the amount of permanent aggrandisement which each procured for France, the ambition of the royal Bourbon was more successful than were the enterprises of the imperial Corsican. All the provinces that Bonaparte conquered, were rent again from France within twenty years from the date when the very earliest ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... difficulties; the friends of the Austrian alliance saw, with displeasure, that that war would cause the refusal of the forty thousand auxiliaries stipulated by the treaty of Vienna; the French ministry already feared the too great aggrandisement of the United States, and decidedly refused the conquest of Canada, on pretence that before a fourteenth state was added to those that had already declared themselves independent, it was necessary first to deliver the thirteen from the yoke of the English. M. Neckar feared everything ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... like an individual, have some purpose, some ideal, some motive which lies outside of and beyond self-interest and self-aggrandisement, war must continue on the face of this earth until the day when the last and strongest man shall look out upon a world that has been depopulated in its pursuit of ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... too much shocked at this undisguised attempt to bully me into an acquiescence in the interested and unprincipled plan for their own aggrandisement, which I now perceived my uncle and his son to have deliberately entered into, at once to find strength or collectedness to frame an answer to what he had said. At length ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rested his whole expectation of vengeance. He informed Charles of the quarrelling among his enemies; he showed him that each of them was seeking his own ends—Piero dei Medici the gratification of his pride, the pope the aggrandisement of his house. He pointed out that armed fleets were in the ports of Villefranche, Marseilles, and Genoa, and that these armaments would be lost; he reminded him that he had sent Pierre d'Urfe, his grand equerry, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... itself, like a sea, circle without circle, vista beyond vista, till the imagination was staggered and the mind exhausted. Now here was a scheme for the accumulation of wealth and for laying the foundation of family aggrandisement purely imaginary, romantic—one might almost say, disinterested. The vagueness, the magnitude, the remoteness of the object, the resolute sacrifice of all immediate and gross advantages, clothe it with the privileges of an abstract idea, so that the project has the air of a fiction or ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... role of mediator. A friendly request for explanation elicited a declaration from Russia, disclaiming all intention of self-aggrandisement, and promising to accept the mediation of Austria in any case where the treaty could be invoked. Austria in consequence endeavoured to persuade the western powers that there was no immediate danger, and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Majesty's Government is convinced that we are indebted for this attack on the part of Japan solely to the constant enmity of England, who never ceases her secret machinations against us. It has been England's eternal policy to damage us for her own aggrandisement. All our endeavours to promote the welfare of this Empire and make the peoples happy have ever met with resistance on the part of England. From the China Seas, throughout all Asia to the Baltic, England has ever thrown obstacles in our way, in order to deprive us of the fruits ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... Christianity as by law established? And can any one fail to perceive that such a religion must needs be political? The cunning few, who make a market of delusion, and esteem nothing apart from their own aggrandisement, are quite aware that the civil and criminal law of England is intimately associated with Christianity—they publicly proclaim their separation impossible, except at the cost of destruction to both. They are sagacious enough to perceive that a people totally ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... influence by virtue of which the standard of truth and goodness which naturally belongs to any relation of life shall prevail. The distinction between religion and secular life must be abandoned. Nothing is less sacred than a Church set on its own aggrandisement. The relations of family and of the State, of business and social life, are to be restored to the divineness which belongs to them, or rather, the divineness which is inalienable from them is to be recognised. In the laws and customs of a true State, Christianity ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... had remained at home, and had inured herself to bear without grumbling, or thinking that she had cause for grumbling, the petulance of her father, and the more cruel harshness and ill-humour of her brother. In all the family schemes of aggrandisement she had been set aside, and Barry had been intended by the father as the scion on whom all the family honours were to fall. His education had been expensive, his allowance liberal, and his whims ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... breaking the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the savage. And as soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the elders, and yields to the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... do the Admiral justice: he loved his country, he was ready at any moment to lay down his life for her, he would have laboured just as earnestly without hope of other reward than the sight of her aggrandisement: but, just the same, when the honours came, he was not one to refuse them! World-empire would ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... dissembled out of delicacy, and is so obvious as to be a public nuisance. But by reversing it, he tells us something not unlike news; something that sounds quite freshly in words; and, if the reader be a man, gives him a moment of great self-satisfaction and spiritual aggrandisement. In many different authors you may find passages more remarkable for grammar, but few of a more ingenious turn, and none that could be more to the point in our connection. The tenacity of many ordinary people in ordinary pursuits is a sort of standing challenge to everybody else. If one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... using, of classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all." This aggrandisement of our common stature rests on questionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by Shakspeare discloses a community, our incapacity of producing HAMLET no less discloses our inferiority. It is certain ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of that period, and the overpowering conception of a divine kingdom, they became the instruments of the greatest triumphs vouchsafed to the Church of Rome. The hosts, driven across the sea by inner restlessness and ill-defined longing, in reality fought for the aggrandisement of the Church. The great Hildebrand resolved to lead all Christendom to Jerusalem, to found on the site of the Holy Sepulchre the divine kingdom preached by St. Augustine, and invest—a risen Christ—the emperor and all the kings of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... protest, but they prevented Greece from doing so. There remained to be reckoned with only Russia and Servia. Russia showed her displeasure by recalling every Russian officer then serving with the Bulgarian army; but she did not make war. Servia, fearful that this Bulgarian aggrandisement jeopardised her own future in the Balkans, made war. Prince Alexander took the field with his troops—made up of Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Turks living in Bulgaria—and in the battle of Slivnitza Bulgaria ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... have occasion to notice. The Emperor, indeed, gave cause for just complaint by the fact of annexing Genoa to the Empire within four months after his solemn declaration to the Legislative Body, in which he pledged himself in the face of France and Europe not to seek any aggrandisement of territory. The pretext of a voluntary offer on the part of Genoa was too absurd to deceive any one. The rapid progress of Napoleon's ambition could not escape the observation of the Cabinet of Vienna, which hegan to allow ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Hunchback, Jaques, &c., would have procured for him in former times no mean position, has been compelled to secede from the Haymarket Theatre from a justifiable feeling of disgust at the continual sacrifices he was required to make for the aggrandisement of one to whom he may not possibly ascribe any superiority of genius. The part assigned to Mr. Phelps (Friar Lawrence) requires an actor of considerable powers, and under the old regime would have deteriorated nothing from Mr. Phelps' position; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the observed of all observers; but, unlike most of his compeers, he abstained from using his advantages for purposes of selfish or personal aggrandisement. He kept aloof from the 'centre of intrigues,' and remained at his post, 'doing his duty humbly and faithfully at a distance from Westminster; while other men, with less than half his claims, were asking and obtaining the highest honours and rewards from a grateful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... enter into proposals for a peace with France. After setting forth that the policy of the Administration had been that of strict neutrality before the commencement of hostilities, and that, after the declaration of war, Ministers adopted the policy of resistance to the ambition and aggrandisement of France, the resolutions went on to state, that at the beginning of the war it was considered a matter of general concern in which His Majesty was to have the cordial co-operation of the powers united with him by the ties of interest and alliance; that His Majesty ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... results of the war will be an improvement in the government and condition of Negroes in Africa. Exploitation of the race for European aggrandisement is sure to be lessened. No such misgoverned colonies as those of Germany will be tolerated under the new rule and the new spirit actuating the victorious Allies. Evils in other sections of that continent will disappear or ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... filled Will's heart only with discontent and an abiding unrest? The answer is plain, because he had determined, come what would, to sever himself from that homely, simple life, to cast the thought of it into the background, to live only for the future, and that future one of success and self-aggrandisement. Morva alone held him back; how could he hope to rise in his career, while his heart was fettered by the memory of a milkmaid, a cowherd, a shepherdess? No, it was very evident that from her he must break away. "But not now," he said to himself, as he paced round the quadrangle, "not yet." She ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... bequest, unless it had been duly made six months at least before the decease of the testator. The prohibition was attributed to an insulting assumption that the Catholic clergymen abused their influence over dying penitents, for sacerdotal or religious, if not for personal aggrandisement, and the impeachment was repelled with bitter execrations. Others objected to the Bill on grounds involving more alarming considerations. They regarded it as the first infringement on the liberty of the Catholic Church—the first criminal attempt to fetter ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... for the community, and though the Jesuits, without doubt, had the full disposition of all the money earned in commerce,*3* and of the distribution of the goods, neither the money nor the goods were used for self-aggrandisement, but were laid out for the benefit of the community at large. The total population of the thirty towns is variously estimated from one hundred and forty to one hundred and eighty thousand,*4* and, curiously ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... to squander the treasures of the Church on amusements, to feed a rabble of flatterers, to contract enormous debts, and to disturb the peace of Italy, not for some vast scheme of ecclesiastical aggrandisement, but in order to place the princes of his family on thrones, that was Leo's conception of the Papal privileges and duties. The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raffaello, are eminently ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... robbed and held to ransom. The freedom of the aristocracy spelled misery for every other class. These self-constituted tyrants passed their lives in devastating faction fights. Worst of all, their divisions and their absorption in petty schemes of personal aggrandisement left Europe at the mercy of uncivilised invaders. In the ninth and tenth centuries, medieval society experienced the same ordeal to which the Roman Empire had been subjected in the fifth. From the North and from the East a new generation of barbarians, perceiving the patent ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... incidents, the everyday passions and fortunes, of the Aventures de Mariette and the Mascarade de la Vie Parisienne represent a reaction not alone against the sublimities and the extravagance of Hugo but against the heroic aggrandisement of things trivial of Balzac as well. True, they deal with kindred subjects, and they purport to be a record of life as it is and not of life as it ought to be. But the pupil's point of view is poles apart from the master's; his intention, his ambition, his inspiration, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... unreserved manner the whole of the despatches; knowing as the nearest neighbour the system that they constantly followed up towards us, I must say that no one is more against acquiring influence in foreign States, or even getting burthened with family aggrandisement in them, than he. He rejected most positively the marriage of Joinville with Donna Maria because he will not have anything to do with Portugal. He rejects a mille times the idea of a future union of the Queen of Spain with Aumale, because he will not have a son where it is ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... planted by national animosity, and nursed and fomented by priestcraft. Events that have since taken place had already cast their shadows over the Mexican frontier; and Florida and Louisiana were regarded as but steps in the ladder of American aggrandisement; but the understanding of these matters was of course confined to the more intelligent; but all were imbued with the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... largeness of his father's character, modified in Lyman by a counter-influence of selfishness, had produced in him an inordinate ambition. Where his father during his political career had considered himself only as an exponent of principles he strove to apply, Lyman saw but the office, his own personal aggrandisement. He belonged to the new school, wherein objects were attained not by orations before senates and assemblies, but by sessions of committees, caucuses, compromises and expedients. His goal was to be in fact what Magnus was only in name—governor. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... nagxe. Afraid timigita. Aft posta parto. After post. Aftermath postfojno. Afternoon posttagmezo. Afterwards poste. Again ree. Against kontraux. Agate agato. Age agxo. Aged maljuna. Agency agenteco. Agenda memorlibro. Agent agento. Aggrandize pligrandigi. Aggrandisement pligrandigo. Aggravate plimalbonigi. Aggression atako. Aggressor atakanto. Aghast terurega. Agile facilmova. Agitate agiti. Ago antaux. Agonize agonii. Agony agonio. Agree konsenti. Agreeable agrabla. Agreement (deed) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... commonly supposed to threaten our national interests, the investigation ought to have for us more than a mere scientific interest. What is the secret of this expansive power? Is it a mere barbarous lust of territorial aggrandisement, or is it some more reasonable motive? And what is the nature of the process? Is annexation followed by assimilation, or do the new acquisitions retain their old character? Is the Empire in its present extent a homogeneous whole, or merely a conglomeration ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... criminal—I first destroyed the golden calm of Louisa's innocence—I lulled her heart with aspiring hopes, and surrendered it, like a betrayer, a prey to the wildest of passions. You will bid me remember my rank—my birth—my father—schemes of aggrandisement. But in vain—I love! My hopes become more fervent as the breach widens between nature and the mere conventions of society— between my resolution and worldly prejudices! We shall see whether love or interest is victorious. (LADY ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his Army Bill. His army scheme was then forced through by the royal fiat alone. On the reopening of the Schleswig-Holstein question, owing to the death of the King of Denmark, German nationalist sentiment was aroused, which Bismarck knew how to use for the aggrandisement of Prussia. The Danish war, in which the two leading German States collaborated and which ended in their favour, had as its result a disagreement of a serious nature between these rival, though mutually ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... made known his displeasure at this result, but found that even those princes who were most zealous against the innovations, were not equally zealous to plunge into at least a doubtful war for the extirpation of heresy, and the aggrandisement, moreover, of the Emperor's authority and power, and accordingly he resolved to put off the decision. On the 22nd he announced a Recess, which gave the Protestants, whose Confession, it was stated, had been publicly heard ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... face. I had hoped to see my daughter a peeress, and now I found her the affianced bride of a parish sawbones. The very foundation of my house of hopes was sapped; at a blow all my schemes for the swift aggrandisement of my family were laid low. It was too much for me. Instead of accepting the inevitable, and being glad to accept it because my child's happiness was involved, I rebelled and kicked ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... fullest integrity to the normal British conscience, must henceforth, say Mr. Froude and his fellow-colonialists, be scored off the moral code of Britain, since they "do not pay" in tangible pelf, in self-aggrandisement, or ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... comfortable doctrine, yet it does strike one that the justification of disaster, in all its many forms, is the opportunity it affords the individualist. He may use it for self-aggrandisement, or for self-devotion—though I rather shy at so showy a word as that last. However, the use he makes of it isn't the point. What is the point, to my mind at least, is this—though it doesn't sound magnificent, it hardly indeed sounds cleanly—that whatever trade fails, whatever profession, thanks ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... scale of intelligence. They regard the English as their natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become. One and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by agitators, that the poverty of Ireland is due to the aggrandisement of England, that the bulk of Irish taxation flows into English coffers, and is used for English purposes to the exclusion of Ireland, and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common reason and the evidence of their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the progress of Europe on which we now enter, it is, of course, to intellectual phenomena that we must, for the most part, refer; material aggrandisement and political power offering us less important though still valuable indications, and serving our purpose rather in a corroborative way. There are five intellectual manifestations to which we may resort—philosophy, science, literature, religion, government. Our obvious ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... and on it in all but name—his hand firmly grasping the reins of power, his voice the living law of the State—stands John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; a man whose steel-blue eyes are as cold as his heart, and whose one aim in every action of his life is the welfare and aggrandisement of John Dudley. He professes himself a Lutheran: at heart, if he care at all for religion of any kind, he is a Papist. But it will not be of service to John Dudley at the present moment to confess that ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Lucrece lay deeper. She not only sought her own enjoyment and aggrandisement; but she could not bear to see anything— even if she did not want it—in the possession of some one else. That was sufficient to make Lucrece long for it and plot to acquire it, though she had no liking for ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... medicines; and the invalids (eheu!) still sit on the promenade and trifle with their fingers in the fringes of shawls and wrappers; and the shop of Pascal Amarante still, in its present bright consummate flower of aggrandisement and new paint, offers everything that it has entered into people's hearts to wish for in the idleness of a sanatorium; and the 'Chateau des Morts' is still at the top of the town; and the fort and the jetty are still at the foot, only there are now ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devoting his time to. No, no, my dear Bernard, the opera is a sort of high 'Change, where the court circle and people of ton meet to speculate in various ways, and often drive as hard a bargain for some purpose of interest or aggrandisement, as the plebeian host of all nations, who form the busy group in the grand civic temple of commerce on Cornbill. You know, I have (as the phrase is), just come out, and of course am led about like a university lion, by the more experienced votaries of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... systems and forms of law. It is only by force that vast communities, dispersed through great distances of space, can be kept together; but now there was no longer either the necessity of self-preservation or the pride of aggrandisement to make one state desire to preponderate ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... scrupulous adherence to their engagements had not always characterised the brothers: who should say that he might not carry off the galleys of the Grand Turk on some marauding expedition designed for his own aggrandisement? There was yet more to be urged against him: not only was he infamous in character, but he was no true Mussulman, for had not his father been a mere renegado, and—worst of all—had not his mother been a ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... they had done anything like as much as she said—which, he begged her pardon, but he didn't believe—it was done for the landlords' own purposes, either to buy off public opinion, or just for show and aggrandisement. People who had prize pigs and prize cattle must have prize cottages of course—"with a race of slaves ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what he was,—he had never ceased to be ashamed of the stable-yard. And as he felt himself to be degraded by that from which he had sprung, so did he think that the only whitewash against such dirt was to be found in the aggrandisement of his daughter and the nobility of her children. He had, perhaps, been happier than he deserved. He might have sold her to some lord who would have scorned her after a while and despised himself. As it was, the Marquis, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... illustrious king, with his sons, is well and happy, and surrounded by his relatives he reigneth even like Indra himself. The king is happy with his sons who are all obedient to him and hath no grief. The illustrious monarch is bent on his own aggrandisement. The king of the Kurus hath commanded me to enquire after thy peace and prosperity, and to ask thee to repair to Hastinapore with thy brothers and to say, after beholding king Dhritarashtra's newly erected palace, whether that one is equal to thy own. Repairing thither, O son of Pritha, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... faults, the very virtues, the parental affections, and the sense of honour, of the unhappy Mr. W. have been for years acted on by, and warped to the base purposes of—HEEP. That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement of the avaricious, false, and grasping—HEEP. That the engrossing object of—HEEP—was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his ulterior views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely to himself. That his last act, completed but a few months since, was to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... or in discharging some business. But Cato quickly perceiving his design, refused all such engagements and made it a rule to do nothing else while the Senate was assembled. For it was neither for the sake of reputation, nor self-aggrandisement, nor by a kind of spontaneous movement, nor by chance, like some others, that he was thrown into the management of state affairs, but he selected a public career as the proper labour of a good man, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... husband and father," "the imperious son," "the proud ambitious sister, Arabella," all combined to force the universally beloved and unassuming Clarissa to marry the wealthy Mr. Somers, who was to be the means of "the aggrandisement of the family." Clarissa, in this perplexing situation, yielded in a desperate mood to "the earnest entreaties of the artful Lovelace to accept the protection of the Ladies of his family." Who these ladies were, to whom the designing ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic or sensual,—even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby, and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the result; but aggrandisement is what is sought, though the effort fails through lack of organisation or system. And again 'self' is not the only possible centre for the systematisation of conduct. System in conduct may be realised in other ways than as self-assertion. It is ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... height by the aspiring house of Barcas succeeded in converting her from a trading city into the capital of a great military empire. So would Venice, had she been able to carry on her system of conquest in the Levant and of territorial aggrandisement on the Italian mainland. The career of Venice was arrested by the League of Cambray. On Carthage the policy of military aggrandisement, which was apparently resisted by the sage instinct of the great merchants while it ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the king's daughter raised her clasped hands in supplication, Angelique became enamoured of Saint George. He was her hero. At the distance where she was she could not well distinguish the figures, and she looked at them as if in the aggrandisement of a dream; the young girl was slight, was a blonde, and, in short, had a face not unlike her own, while the saint was frank and noble looking, with the beauty of an archangel. It was as if she herself had ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... one-sidedness—losing sight altogether of its vast consequence to the shipping interest; and of the freightage, which is as much an article of commerce and profit as cottons and woollens; oblivious, moreover, of the great political question involved in the maintenance and aggrandisement of that shipping interest, which must be taken to account by the statesman and the patriot as redressing to no inconsiderable extent the adverse action of unfriendly tariffs. It is only after careful ponderance of these and other combined considerations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the Directory, had commenced a career of unwarrantable conquest, for the simple purpose of self-aggrandisement, and her great general, Bonaparte, had begun that course of successful warfare in which he displayed those brilliant talents which won for him an empire, constituted him, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, a hero, and advanced France to a high position of tyrannical power. But ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne |
