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Aggrandizement   /ˈægrəndˌaɪzmənt/  /əgrˈændˌaɪzmənt/   Listen
Aggrandizement

noun
1.
The act of increasing the wealth or prestige or power or scope of something.  Synonyms: aggrandisement, elevation.  "His elevation to cardinal"



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"Aggrandizement" Quotes from Famous Books



... case," put in Schryhart, who was merely waiting for an opportunity to explain further, "in which an unexpected political situation develops an unexpected crisis, and this man uses it for his personal aggrandizement and to the detriment of every other person. The welfare of the city is nothing to him. The stability of the very banks he borrows from is nothing. He is a pariah, and if this opportunity to show him ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... found them. With an immediate and perspective increase of expenditure that was perfectly frightful—in the meditation and actual prosecution of vast but useless enterprises—of foreign interference and aggrandizement, to secure a little longer continuance of popular favour, they deliberately destroyed a principal source of revenue, by the reduction of the postage duties, in defiance of the repeated protests and warnings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... his inclinations, no matter how devious the paths into which they strayed, nor how mercilessly obstacles must be tramped down, in order to facilitate the accomplishment of his purposes. Naturally neither cruel nor vindictive, he had gradually grown pitiless in all that conduced to self-aggrandizement or self-indulgence; incapable of a generosity that involved even slight sacrifice, a polished handsome epicurean, an experienced man of the world, putting aside all scruples in the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... patriot, of another. The long influence of years and custom—the unconscious deference to the opinion of those whom our youth has been taught to venerate, can alone suffice to tame down an enterprising and grasping mind to objects of public advantage, in preference to designs for individual aggrandizement: influence of such a nature had never operated upon the views and faculties of the hero of Marathon. Habituated to the enjoyment of absolute command, he seemed incapable of the duties of civil subordination; and the custom ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in Bretagne was uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavior of his sons may be extenuated; for while he spent his life, and sacrificed his peace, and violated every principle of honor and humanity to compass their political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards them, and set them a bad example ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... ministers Colbert Aims of Colbert His great services Louvois His great executive abilities The first war of Louis XIV. Conquest of Flanders Its iniquity Invasion of Holland Easy victories Rise of William of Nassau Prevents the conquest of Holland Peace of Nimeguen Louis in the zenith of power His aggrandizement His palaces His court His mistresses His friendship with Madame de Maintenon Elevation of Maintenon Religious persecution Revocation of the Edict of Nantes Coalition against Louis XIV. Unfortunate wars Humiliation His death Effects of his reign ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... between England and France arose out of the King's proclamation against seditious writings, which we noticed in the last chapter. Chauvelin complained of some of its phrases, and stated that France waged war for national safety, not for aggrandizement. Grenville thereupon loftily remarked that Chauvelin had no right to express an opinion on a question which concerned solely the King's Government and Parliament. The British reply irritated ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the moral condition of the globe. But how much nearer does it come when it is one's own country! And the church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the church of Christ. Therefore we undertook to rid the territory of slavery. Since slavery has divested itself of its municipal protection and has become a declared public enemy, ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... the hour with doctors in the sacred temples. His great physical beauty, the wisdom of his replies to the puzzling questions of the Pharisees and the Sadducces, his sympathy with the poor and the needy, his ambition for all that is best in human development, and his indifference to worldly aggrandizement, altogether made him a marked man in his day and generation. For these reasons he was hated, reviled, persecuted, like the long line of martyrs who followed his teachings. He commands far more love and reverence as a true man with only human possibilities, than as a God, superior ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... same spirit. Sit down again and hear me. You fear Russia, and think that if she gains too great an ascendency among nations, she will use it to the detriment of all Europe. I agree with you, and I myself would view the aggrandizement of Russia under Catharine with disapprobation and distrust. You are right, and I feel the embarrassment of my present political condition. At the commencement of this Turkish war, I would have used my honest endeavors to check the usurping ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... omission of duty. This would be the more likely to take place, as the delinquencies of the larger members might be expected sometimes to proceed from an ambitious premeditation in their rulers, with a view to getting rid of all external control upon their designs of personal aggrandizement; the better to effect which it is presumable they would tamper beforehand with leading individuals in the adjacent States. If associates could not be found at home, recourse would be had to the aid of foreign powers, who would seldom be ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... them as representatives of the great gift-making race, and indulged himself in a dream of pipe-smoking, orations, treaties, presents and alliances, finding its climax in the marriage of his virgin queen to the king of France, and unvaryingly tending to the swiftly increasing aggrandizement of Listening Crane. They sat down to bear's meat, sagamite and beans. The queen sat down with them, clothed in her entire wardrobe: vest of swan's skin, with facings of purple and green from the neck of the mallard; petticoat of plaited hair, with embroideries ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... really a contribution to the public than it is to the manager of the business himself. Although it seems to the man, and generally to the community, that the active business man is a self-seeker, and although his motive may be self-aggrandizement, yet, in point of fact, no man ever manages a legitimate business in this life, that he is not doing a thousand-fold more for other men than he is trying to do even for himself. For, in the economy of God's providence, every right ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... chance of the plague subsiding; and it was not till the close of the great Napoleonic wars that the Powers agreed, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, to act together, and do away with the scourge of Christendom. And even then little was accomplished till France combined territorial aggrandizement with the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... centralizing administration of Henry the Fourth, of Richelieu, and of Mazarin, almost absolutely in the hands of the Crown. Under the three great rulers who have just been named her ambition was steadily directed to the same purpose of territorial aggrandizement, and though limited as yet to the annexation of the Spanish and Imperial territories which still parted her frontier from the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine, a statesman of wise political genius would have discerned the beginning of that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... his affection. She knew that his mother neither behaved to him so as to make his home comfortable at present, nor to give him any assurance that he might form a home for himself, without strictly attending to her views for his aggrandizement. With such a knowledge as this, it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on the subject. She was far from depending on that result of his preference of her, which her mother and sister still considered as certain. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... cause, and the blood and character of the people who put him forward as their right arm in their contest; but that he did not mar that success by arrogance, or destroy the brightness of his own name by personal aggrandizement, is due to a noble nature and to the calm individual excellence of ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... Zealand, the belief in this continent weakened, but was not abandoned. During the latter half of the eighteenth century eagerness for scientific knowledge was added to the former striving after individual or State aggrandizement. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... have waged war with each other. When not engaged in actual hostilities, they have watched each other with jealous animosity—seeking by intrigue and diplomatic schemes to thwart or defeat the designs which one or the other had formed for national aggrandizement. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... of the family secrets of the Darringtons? Suppose that he knew that Mrs. Brentano and her daughter would inherit a large fortune, if Gen'l Darrington died intestate? If he had wooed and won the heart of the daughter, and believed that her rights had been sacrificed to promote the aggrandizement of an alien, the adopted step-son Prince, had not such a man, the accepted lover of the daughter, a personal interest in the provisions of a will which disinherited Mrs. Brentano, and her child? Have you not now, motive, means, and opportunity, and links ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor. St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... the Virginia Company of London and of the English public which gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizement for the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and the conversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... told her that here, by this same desire for self-aggrandizement, or, to call it by its more common name of popularity, Susan had fallen, she ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... frontier? Will no slaves run away? What is to be gained by a dissolution of the Union? Not peace; for if, when united, there exists such cause of dissension, the evil will be tenfold greater when separated. Not national aggrandizement, for division brings weakness, imbecility, and a loss of self-respect; it invites aggressions from foreign powers, and compels to submission to insults that otherwise would not be given. Not general competence, for the South is quite as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... revolution, of course. It goes without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises, by lies, by treachery, and by the butcher-knife, for the aggrandizement of a single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne quite long enough in Russia, I should think. And it is to be hoped that the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end to it and set up the republic in its place. Some of us, even the white-headed, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... war, but the following judicious considerations. First: Media was almost afraid of being beaten. Second: Bello was almost afraid to conquer. Media, because he was inferior in men and arms; Bello, because, his aggrandizement was already a subject of warlike comment among the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... total annihilation for a long period of all external commerce nothing? Are blazing cities, beleaguered harbours, internal discontent, servile war, nothing in the scale of aggrandizement? Is the great possibility of the European powers interfering as nothing? Will not Russia, aware now of the value of her North American possessions, look with a jealous eye upon the Bald Eagle's attempt at a too close investigation of ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... and generated by the first, is, that every rebel devotes his whole soul and energy to the success of the rebellion, forcibly forgetting his individuality. Our thus called leaders think first of their little selves, whose aggrandizement the public events are to secure, and the public cause is to square ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... the Roses a change passed over the spirit of English government which was little short of a revolution. As the country tasted the sweets of rest and firm government that reaction of feeling, that horror of fresh civil wars, that content with its own internal growth and indifference to foreign aggrandizement, which distinguished the epoch of the Tudors, began to assert its power. The Crown became identified with the thought of national prosperity, almost with the thought of national existence. Loyalty ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... importation into Europe, would eat us up; and then these local merchants would lose everything. That is the justification of our so-called tyranny. Are we to have nothing for our risks? Look at this installation of machinery—all built, too, with a view to future aggrandizement: does it strike you as ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... animosity, there may possibly be a lurking national one, thinly covered over with the fashionable mantle of courtesy. The conflicting interests of the two nations may endanger peace.—The source of national aggrandizement in both nations, is commerce; and the high road to them the ocean. We and the British are travelling the same way, in keen pursuit of the same object; and it is scarcely probable, that we shall be preserved in a state of peace, by abstract love ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... was not the order of mind which could realize its own aggrandizement by wholesale criticism of a great railroad system for the sake of criticism, and, moreover, he had a certain pride and self-respect about maintaining the majesty of that which he must continue to patronize ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... were in a tottering condition, the moral were no less shattered. The corner-stone of every political system, the sanctity of legitimate possession, without which there would be only one war of all against all, was gone; politicians had already thrown off the mask in Poland; the lust of aggrandizement had prevailed . . . . The indissoluble bond connecting morals and politics being broken, the result was to make egotism the prevailing principle of public as well as ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... of European diplomacy, and inspired at the same time by the new philosophy of the school of Rousseau. He insists that the balance of power must be preserved in America as well as in Europe, because "Nature," "the aggrandizement of the human soul," and the "felicity of man" are unanimous in demanding it. The English colonies are more populous and wealthy than the French; therefore the French should have more land, to keep ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... to negotiate with him in a character which England could not acknowledge; but intimated that if France was desirous of maintaining peace with Great Britain, she must renounce her views of aggression and aggrandizement, and confine herself to her own territory, without insulting other Governments, without disturbing their ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... it indirectly in his outrages and violations. Convinced, as he thought, of the selfishness which guided all its resolutions, all his attacks and invasions against the law of nations, or independence of States, were either preceded or followed with some offers of aggrandizement, of indemnity, of subsidy, or of alliance. His political intriguers were generally more successful in Prussia than his military heroes in crossing the Rhine or the Elbe, in laying the Hanse Towns under contribution, or in occupying Hanover; or, rather, all these acts of violence and injustice ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... the several original colonies of America founded. Some of the colonists came from a spirit of adventure. Some came for territorial aggrandizement and national enrichment. Some came as mercantile speculators. And each of these considerations may have entered somewhat into the most of these colonization schemes. But it was mainly flight from oppression on account of religious convictions which influenced the first colony of ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of his father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king; he should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which should transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my maxims of state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and thieving rascal because my garment is worn at the elbows. If you will grant ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... it the rejection of metaphysical concepts—to financial force, to political force, to social force; and finally, since there was no longer any reward in itself for our speculations, we submitted to the lust for personal aggrandizement in fortune, in notoriety, in castebound irresponsibility, and even for the hypocritical backslapping ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... between study and instructing the Moldavians who had accompanied him. He is said to have spoken Persian, Turkish, Arabic, modern Greek, Russian, Moldavian, and Italian. The work to which Hugo refers was a history of the aggrandizement and decadence of the Ottoman Empire. Written in Latin, and translated subsequently into English, French, and German, it was long the standard work on ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... impossible to imaging how much this division of sovereignty contributes to the well-being of each of the states which compose the Union. In these small communities, which are never agitated by the desire of aggrandizement or the cares of self-defence, all public authority and private energy is employed in internal melioration. The central government of each state, which is in immediate juxtaposition to the citizens, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... Catholicism was and remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into hundreds of warring and politically impotent organizations. Religious faith became distorted into a weapon for selfish and greedy territorial aggrandizement in the hands of Protestant princes. "Cujus regio ejus religio" was the taunt hurled in the face of the imploring Calvinists of France and the Low Countries by the arrogant Lutherans of Germany. Such a sword ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... any of the civil or political rights of Roman citizens, nor any of the privileges of Latin[29] allies; at best they kept some souvenirs of their departed independence in their interior administration, but otherwise were considered as subjects of Rome. And yet it was for the aggrandizement of this city that they shed their blood upon all the fields of battle which it pleased Rome to choose; it was for the glory and extension of the Roman power that they gained these conquests in which they had no share. Some who had attempted to regain their independence were not even ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... of the old-time civilization. And it is harder to unlearn an old lesson than to learn a new. The institutions and modes of thought of the Old World are to the last degree unfavorable to the progress of such a nationality as ours. Their tendency being toward the aggrandizement of the few and the centralization of power, renders them wholly incompatible with that freedom of thought and action, that opening up of large fields of exertion as well as of the road to distinction and eminence, with all their incentives to effort, which are the very life ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... gardens and triumphal arches, with groves and fountains all in perfect symmetry, and well-balanced vistas radiating in all directions; but they are the result of centuries of despotism—of the impoverishment of the many and the aggrandizement of the few. This, we hope, is not to be the fashion in America. It is true that the ground plan for the city of Washington exhibits a design analogous to the above, but we think it will be a long time ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... in such repute have been a smashed door-sill or an old arch, that freshmen have now abandoned conic sections for crowbars, and instead of the "Principia" have taken up the pickaxe. You know, my dear fellow, with what enthusiasm I enter into any scheme for the aggrandizement of our Alma Mater, so I need not tell you how ardently I adventured into the career now opened to me. My time was completely devoted to the matter; neither means nor health did I spare, and in my search for antiquarian lore, I have actually ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... aggrandizement the puppets were willing—as puppets must needs be. Indeed, the duke was seriously enamored of the princess, whose portrait he had seen in miniature, and had himself importuned the emperor to intercede with Francis, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... idealism that has come with our material prosperity and which to-day shames the memory of the men who founded our Republic? Are we negligent of the serious menace that confronts any people when it loses its hold upon those goods of life that are far more precious than commercial prestige and individual aggrandizement? Are we losing our hold upon the sterner virtues which our fathers possessed,—upon the things of the spirit that are ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... own discomfort and disadvantage. How they have borne the sneers of the Southern press, the ostracism from society in the South, the dangers of Kuklux in remote counties, to raise up a downtrodden race, not for personal aggrandizement, but for the building up and glory of His kingdom who is no respecter of persons, is surely worthy our deepest gratitude, our heartfelt thanks, and our prayers and blessing. Under the training of a good Christian ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... gave Example to the meanest, of the fear Of God, and all integrity of life And manners; who, august, yet lowly; who Severe, yet gracious; in his very heart Detesting all oppression, all intent Of private aggrandizement; and the first In every public duty—held the scales Of justice, and as law, which reigned in him, Commanded, gave rewards; or with the edge Vindictive smote—now light, now heavily, According to the stature of the crime. Conspicuous, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... years to come has France shown any particular adaptability to colonial problems nor was it able to register in its colonies successes such as England and Germany had to show. The colonial expansion of France, however, continued. In 1882 new territory was acquired in Annam and, in 1884, Cambodia. This aggrandizement of France at the cost of China finally resulted in a declaration of war on the part of the latter country against France in August, 1884, lasting until June, 1885, and resulting in the confirmation of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... disastrous, for it was only now that the boy prince would be recognized and received as the undoubted heir to his father's throne; a few years later he would, to a certainty, be looked at askance as a mere pretender—a pawn in the game of some unscrupulous king-maker playing for his own aggrandizement. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... and established his dominion on both banks of the Tagus. Mahomet now began seriously to repent his treaty with the Christian, and to tremble even for his own possessions. He vainly endeavored to divert his ally from the projects of aggrandizement which that ally had evidently formed. The kings of Badajoz and Saragossa became tributaries to the latter; nay, if any reliance is to be placed on either Christian or Arabic historians,[29] the King of Seville himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... would have crushed the revolution. But the chance was lost. At this moment indeed the two German powers were far from wishing honestly for the suppression of the Republic and the re-establishment of a strong monarchy in France. Such a restoration would have foiled their projects of aggrandizement in Eastern Europe. The strife on the Rhine had set Russia free, as Pitt had foreseen, to carry out her schemes of aggression; and Austria and Prussia saw themselves forced, in the interest of a balance of power, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... measures which his far greater wisdom and his supreme sense of responsibility told him were unwise, deserved to be hanged, or at least to be imprisoned until the war was over. That some of them died in shame and disgrace upon the failure of their own selfish schemes for personal or political aggrandizement, was only a ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... was a rival to Athens; but that being down, it were best to keep her so, and let the pride and arrogance of Sparta be trodden under. But Cimon, as Critias says, preferring the safety of Lacedaemon to the aggrandizement of his own country, so persuaded the people, that he soon marched out with a large army to their relief. Ion records, also, the most successful expression which he used to move the Athenians. "They ought not to suffer Greece to be lamed, nor their own city ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... military officer whose name I don't remember, and that an elopement had been planned to take place the next night. The fury and dismay of the old autocrat passed belief; he saw in a flash the downfall of all his hopes of family aggrandizement through union with the royal house, and, knowing well the spirit of his daughter, despaired of ever bringing her to subjection. Nevertheless, he attacked her unmercifully, and, by bullying and threats, by imprisonment, and even bodily chastisement, he ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... one of the noblest and most successful men the world has ever known. The fratricide of his earlier years was for the good of mankind, and his whole life was consecrated to the cause of human liberty, while not a thought of self-aggrandizement seems to have ever ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... first place, to gratify it by elevating his country and his kind; no, but that most hateful species of it which exists in the contrivance and working out of family arrangements and insane projects for the aggrandizement of our offspring, under circumstances where we must know that they cannot be accomplished without wrecking the happiness of those to whom they are proposed. Such a passion, in its darkest aspect—and in this I have drawn it—has nothing more in view than the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... gold sifted into the atmosphere, through which all the objects of our regard loom, colossal and glittering. As we advance in years, we should indeed learn to recognize, and make allowance for, this refraction and these tints, but without ceasing to enjoy the beautiful aggrandizement they bestow. When there is danger that a character will melt into a mere mush of ungirt feelings, the astringent and bracing use of satire is fit. The application of a fleecing nonchalance or of a jibing scorn to a soul of strong and ardent sentiment, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... in his expression of the full and free play of the intellect, in his denunciation of formalism and slavery to tradition. The whole outcome of his life, too, was a tendency toward moral and aesthetic aggrandizement. Inconsistent in many things, his life may be summed up as a bold remonstrance against the binding influences of tradition and an enthusiasm for ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... fort, aside from its undoubted pictorial charm, is historically interesting, in that it is a relic of the seventeenth century and of those first Spanish governors, martially ambitious, who stirred up wars with the Moros for their own personal aggrandizement, wars which have been protracted through ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... Europe, and with an eye to appease the jealousies existing among the Powers, which extended to American conditions, colonial and commercial. While united against Napoleon, they viewed with distrust the aggrandizement of Great Britain. Ross was ordered, therefore, to discountenance any overture of the inhabitants to place themselves under British dominion; but should he find a general and decided disposition to withdraw ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and Savoy from the French grasp. This scheme has been criticised as if it were based solely on military considerations; but it was rather dictated by schemes of political aggrandizement. The conquest of Nice and Savoy was necessary to complete the ambitious schemes of the Hapsburgs, who sought to gain a large part of Piedmont at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and after conquering Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to the utmost verge ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... immoderate love of country lead? To a passion for aggrandizement at the expense of others, and what was this but selfishness with a gloss so bright as to make it look like a virtue? It led to the strangling of conscience in national affairs, so as to make wrong seem right, and, more ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... each other for happiness, and sought the aggrandizement, and not the felicity, of their children. The acquisition of wealth and splendour and the enjoyment of pleasure occupied their thoughts, and those parents who secured these advantages for their offspring, however they might have neglected ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... the peculiar dangers from which they thought they had forever escaped; that the unity, the solidarity, the loyalty of these fervent people is being turned as a weapon of offense against the whole country, for the greater profit of the leaders and the aggrandizement of their power. I undertake, in fact, in this narrative, to expose and to demonstrate what I do believe to be one of the most direful conspiracies of treachery in the history of the ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted to the former plan of carving principalities for his relatives out of the possessions of their neighbors and the Church, may be counted among the most important causes of the final ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... plans in respect to ships and shipping. He gave the bishop an account of what he had done, and of what he intended to do, for the elevation and improvement of his people; but all his plans of this kind were confined to such improvements as would tend to the extension and aggrandizement of his own power. In other words, the ultimate object of the reforms which he was desirous of introducing was not the comfort and happiness of the people themselves, but his own exaltation and glory among the potentates of the earth as ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... monograph is to show the bad effects of Negro suffrage which had no place in Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction or in the early Congressional plan, but was forced upon the South by a group of aggressive radicals led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner as a means of their personal aggrandizement and of executing punishment and revenge upon the Southern States. It is not true that these two statesmen desired to force Negro rule upon the South. They tried to give that section a democratic government. At first ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... is able to hide her faults when she has the main chance in view. My stepmother was a good deal younger than my father, and I dare say on the whole made him, socially at any rate, a fairly good wife. Her one idea was social aggrandizement at any cost, and I unhappily was to fall a victim ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... offset from the population, bound to the mother city by indissoluble ties of privilege and civic duties; and in many other ways they made every war, by and through the colonizing system to which it gave occasion, serviceable to future aggrandizement. War, managed in this way, and with these results, became to Rome what commerce or rural industry is to other countries, viz. the only hopeful and general way for making a fortune. Fourthly, by means of colonies it was that Rome delivered herself from her surplus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... to think that superior bravery or skill would alone have done the business; those are often triumphant, but occasionally defeated. The Romans owed their gradual aggrandizement to a line of conduct that, whether in good or ill fortune, tended to make them the sovereigns of the world. A line of conduct in which, if it had been in human nature to persevere, they would have preserved the situation to which they had ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... Kentucky was all but out. Maryland hung in the crisis of life and death under the guns of Fort McHenry. In South Carolina alone can it be said that any fair expression of the popular will was on the Secession side. The Rebellion was the work of a governing class, all whose ideas and hopes were the aggrandizement of their own order. Terrorism opened the way, reckless lying made the game sure. If any one is inclined to doubt this, let him look at the sway which Robespierre and his few associates exercised in Paris. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... slain, and a brave must mourn thirty days, with blackened face and loosened hair, for the enemy whose life he had taken. While the spoils of war were allowed, this did not extend to territorial aggrandizement, nor was there any wish to overthrow another nation and enslave its people. It was a point of honor in the old days to treat a captive with kindness. The common impression that the Indian is naturally cruel and revengeful is entirely opposed ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... sorely burdening his subjects, and awakening increasing discontent; and he himself, through the gradual decay of his mental faculties, had become a mere tool in the hands of Anne Travers, and of ministers whose only aim was their own aggrandizement. In 1367 the "Good Parliament" virtually seized the helm of the state from the hands of the king and his ministers. The Black Prince was the chief agent in urging these reforms, but his death, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... opposition, and the unrest of her American colonies. The Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency. Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her American colonial empire was lost; Catherine's brilliant policy, and the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening what ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... has excelled other writers in patient and exact study of the original sources of this part of colonial history, characterizes Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, as "one whose whole life was passed in self-aggrandizement, first deserting Father White, then Charles I., and making friends of Puritans and republicans to secure the rentals of the province of Maryland, and never contributing a penny for a church or school-house" ("English Colonization of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... power of the Senate over appointments to office, and but for the desire to punish President Johnson the representatives would never have consented to the Tenure-of-office Act. They were now determined, if possible, to strip the Senate of its great aggrandizement of power. The feeling of many members of the House was to sustain an amendment offered by General Logan directing that "all civil offices, except those of judges of the United-States courts, filled by appointment before the 4th of March, 1869, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in considering the Beautiful in the arts, that far from giving rise to arbitrary and fantastic conceptions, the great ideal must become, according to the science and method of the master,—the aggrandizement and the harmony of the faculties of the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... stripped of power and reputation, convicted of felony, and led by his enemies to an ignominious death; and what to a woman of her temper was perhaps a still severer trial, she beheld her son,—that son for whose aggrandizement she had without remorse urged her weak husband to strip of his birthright his own eldest born,—dispossessed in his turn of title and estates, and reduced by an act of forfeiture to the humble level of a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... other denominations must rest on the spirit of Christ calling us together. It cannot come from any other source. Popularity, self aggrandizement, aught that can darken in any degree our spirituality, must be set aside. Only what feeds and fills the sentiment with unworldliness, can give peace and good will ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... forgotten. The second partition by which Russia and Prussia secured the booty that they had, as we have seen, a few months previously arrogated to themselves, was effected in a Europe convulsed with war, that little noticed and scarcely protested against the dismemberment of a European state and the aggrandizement of two others, with its fatal consequence of Prussia's rise to power. The tale of the scene in the Diet of Grodno, convoked under the compulsion of the Russian armies to ratify the partition, is well known: how the few deputies who consented to attend sat with Russian cannon turned ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... that the new science was for a long time to be worked in the interest of old ends of human exploitation. He thought that it would rapidly give man new ends. Instead, it put at the disposal of a class the means to secure their old ends of aggrandizement at the expense of another class. The industrial revolution followed, as he foresaw, upon a revolution in scientific method. But it is taking the revolution many centuries to produce a new mind. Feudalism was doomed by the applications of ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... and more seriously upon reluctant organizations. As a whole they were an attempt to make government more truly representative of the voters, and to take the control of affairs from the hands of men who might and often did use them for private aggrandizement. They were overshadowed in 1896 by the paramount issue of free silver, and were deferred in their fulfilment for a decade by accidents which drove them from the public mind. The Spanish War, reviving prosperity, and the renewal of tariff legislation, did not check the activities of the ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... found her in a state of incoherency. Occasional gleams of reason broke out through the cloud that obscured her intellect, but they carried with them the marks of a mind knit indissolubly to wealth and aggrandizement. The same tenor of thought, and the same broken fragments of ambitious speculation, floated in rapid confusion through the tempests of delirium which swept with awful ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... She is just to the conquered, but rigid. She makes them self-supporting, but gives the benefit of labor to the laborer. She does not seem to look upon the colonies as outside possessions which she is at liberty to work for the support and aggrandizement of the home government. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... to a demonstration of the impolicy of applying the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty as a rule for its government. The administration of President Polk was an epoch in the history of the continent. By the annexation of Texas a system of territorial aggrandizement was inaugurated; and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which California, Utah, and New Mexico were acquired, was a legitimate result. Every child knows that the tendency is toward the acquisition of all North America. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... belligerents, as the truth transpires; appear to be exactly such motives as have caused wars in all times and countries. They are essentially selfish motives—that is to say, they are based upon speculations of national power, territorial aggrandizement, political advantage, and commercial gain. Neither side can claim any superiority of principle, or ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... be doing Masaniello injustice, however, if we did not add, that having no distinct prospect of rendering essential service to his country, he was at the same time totally free from any sinister views of personal aggrandizement. He appears to have been sincere in his wishes, that when he had set Naples free,—by which he understood the abolition of imposts,—the government of it should be committed to a popular management. The Memoirs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various

... and individual aggrandizement to the winds. Let political preferment and partisan proclivities bide their time, and as a united and one-minded people, devote heart and mind, strength and money, to the prosecution of the campaign, without considering what may ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... King who has saved us." The theme no doubt is one which admits of much interesting and important enquiry; and it has many sides. But after all the true philosophy of it lies in "the truth as it is in Jesus." Let the Christian be seeking the reward of personal aggrandizement in heaven, "to sit on His right hand, or on His left, in His glory"; and the motive is as earthly as if the scene of its fulfilment were to be an earthly palace. Let him be seeking the "well done" of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ has redeemed ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... flowered into a culture, a learning, a refinement in art and manners, to which the Christian world of that day was a stranger. It must have seemed so in the awakening of the sixteenth century, when Europe, Spain leading, began that great movement of discovery and aggrandizement which has, in the end, been profitable only to a portion of the adventurers. And what shall we say of a nation as old, if not older than any of these we have mentioned, slowly building up meantime a civilization and perfecting a system of government and a social ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... hostile groups, the one standing on the defensive against the warlike machinations of the other, and both groups bidding for the favor of those minor Powers whose traditions and current aspirations run to national (dynastic) aggrandizement by way of political intrigue. It would come to a more articulate and accentuated form of that balance of power that has latterly gone bankrupt in Europe, with the most corrupt and unreliable petty monarchies of eastern Europe vested with a casting vote; ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... the orphans of America. The people had grown so accustomed to regarding the McCalls, the Perkinses, the Hydes, the McCurdys, and the Alexanders, whose eminent physiognomies looked out at them from their insurance policies, as lofty and generous souls far removed from thoughts of pelf or self-aggrandizement, that my assertion caused consternation such as would occur in a Chinese temple if some rough intruder struck the idol, before whom a congregation was worshipping, with a stone. At once an avalanche ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... previously. Being, as we claim, and as our past history justifies us in claiming, a nation indisposed to aggression, unwilling to extend our possessions or our interests by war, the measure of strength we set ourselves depends, necessarily, not upon our projects of aggrandizement, but upon the disposition of others to thwart what we consider our reasonable policy, which they may not so consider. When they resist, what force can they bring against us? That force must be naval; we have no exposed point upon which land operations, decisive in character, can be directed. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... than He gave free loose to the indulgence of his vanity. When He remembered the Enthusiasm which his discourse had excited, his heart swelled with rapture, and his imagination presented him with splendid visions of aggrandizement. He looked round him with exultation, and Pride told him loudly that He was superior to the rest ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... in college; and no man on earth could conjecture that in his own acervo there would ever be aggrandizement, such as ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... restoration of ancient Poland. How easily might not Prussia, backed by the enthusiasm of the patriotic Poles, have repelled the Russian colossus, already threatening Europe! But the Berlin diplomatists had yet to learn the homely truth, that "honesty is the best policy." They aided in the aggrandizement of Russia, drew down a nation's curse upon their heads for the sake of an addition to the territory of Prussia, the maintenance of which cost more than its revenue, and violated the Divine commands during a period of storm and convulsion, when the aid of Heaven was indeed required. The ministers ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Efficient action by this aggregated man depends wholly upon the unselfish exercise by each part of its function for the good of the whole. Defect and disorder arise the moment the head seeks power or aggrandizement for itself, the hands work for their good alone, or the feet strive to bear the body alone the paths they only wish to tread. Disease follows, if the evil is not remedied; disease, the sure precursor of dissolution. How disturbed and unhappy each member of such ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... embarrass and thwart the other proprietors by his various wild schemes for self-aggrandizement. As Mr. Kendall said in a letter of August 4: "There is much Fog in Smith's letter, but it ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... Holland, which resulted in the subjection to the British crown of the colonial possessions of that industrious people, and which compelled the fleets of the United Provinces to acknowledge British supremacy on the high seas, were in the line of commercial aggrandizement, and the Navigation Act transferred to England a large share of the Dutch carrying trade, and enriched English shipowners with an utterly selfish indifference to ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... largesses and promises, to inflame them more and more; by which methods they became popular and powerful. On the other hand, the most of the nobility opposed their proceedings to the utmost; under pretense, indeed, of supporting the senate, but in reality for their own aggrandizement. For, to state the truth in few words, whatever parties, during that period, disturbed the republic under plausible pretexts, some, as if to defend the rights of the people, others, to make the authority ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... and fliers and have them get to our Mineola laboratory as fast as possible. We've kept much of the detail of construction of our space-ship secret, for obvious reasons. But the time has come to forget personal aggrandizement and the world must know all we have learned by our labor and research. Then see that every manufacturing agency, capable of even a little of what it will take for the program, is drafted to the work—by Federal statute if necessary—and turn out ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks

... to our political relations, the gift of the African does not lie in the direction of political aggrandizement. His sphere is the church, the school, the farm, the workshop. With us, the tools are the proper instruments of the man. This is why our country has been partitioned among the political agencies of the world—the Japhetic powers, for they can best do the work to be done ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... obliged to adopt some form of internal policy, and to appoint a sufficient number of ministers, intrusted not only with the spiritual functions, but even with the temporal direction of the Christian commonwealth. The safety of that society, its honor, its aggrandizement, were productive, even in the most pious minds, of a spirit of patriotism, such as the first of the Romans had felt for the republic, and sometimes of a similar indifference, in the use of whatever means might ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... great cardinal had for its objects the aggrandizement of France, as well as the weakening of the power of Austria. So long as the struggle between the Protestant princes and the Swedes against the Imperialists had been maintained with equal successes on both sides, he had been well content to see Germany watering its soil with the blood ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... injustice that it brings with it sooner or later its own punishment. Happily for the colony the realization of their projects depends not upon themselves; and his Majesty's ministers will not lend their sanction to schemes of private aggrandizement, which can only be accomplished by the sacrifice of the public good. If these men have not themselves the sagacity to dive into futurity, and to foresee the dangers and contests to which unjust privileges and ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... possible to grant France less stringent conditions. So long as Belgium—under some form of self-government—is under German sway there is no hope of revenge of France, and the conviction prevails here that after this war France will abstain from her dreams of aggrandizement and become pacific. Germany can then make reductions in the burdens laid on her people for military service ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... she was engrossed with her military and naval forces in the turbulent wars in Europe, during the ascendant period of Napoleon, the British Government would most probably have employed her armies and navies mainly in the accomplishment of these aims of territorial aggrandizement. Her invasion of the Northwest territory from Canada, at the opening of the War of 1812-15, which so disastrously ended with the destruction of the British fleet by Commodore Perry on Lake Erie, and the annihilation of the British army ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... Scotland to the northern part of Ireland, or directly to the shores of the New World, then holding forth to the disturbed population of Europe peculiar features of attractiveness, accompanied with the most alluring prospects of future aggrandizement and wealth. Among the families who passed over during this period were some of the extensive clan of Johnstons (frequently spelled Johnstone); also, the Alexanders, Ewarts, Bells, Knoxes, Barnetts, Pattons, Wilsons, Spratts, Martins, with a strong ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... others; but he who studies in order to perform the precepts, will be enabled to study, teach, observe, and do the commandments." Rabbi Zadok said, "make not the study of the law subservient to thy aggrandizement, neither make a hatchet thereof to hew therewith." And thus said Hillel, "whosoever receiveth any emolument from the words of the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... privately that, in the event of a divorce, his royal master was ready to espouse the Princesse Marie de Medicis, his kinswoman (although at this period Henry evinced no inclination towards such an alliance), but even when he discovered that his Holiness remained unmoved by this prospect of family aggrandizement, he ventured so far as to hint, in conjunction with the Cardinal d'Ossat, that it was probable, should the Pontiff continue to withhold his consent to the annullation of the King's present marriage, he would dispense with it altogether, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... determined to put Bolivar on the throne, and adds that he saw a letter of "a man in high position who has enjoyed the entire confidence of Bolivar, but who is now in complete opposition to all his schemes of personal aggrandizement." Bolivar, according to this letter, intended to become the monarch of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Then Harrison mentions the printing of a paper on the evils of free government, and states that that paper, ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... this monopoly is retained, the institution will continue to extend itself wherever it can find room to spread. He who looks for any other result, must expect that nations, which, for centuries, have waged war to extend their commerce, will now abandon that means of aggrandizement, and bankrupt themselves to force the abolition of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... speedy victory of the Entente as a foregone conclusion, and imbued with a sort of mystical faith in his own prophetic insight and star, he looked upon the European War as an occasion for Imperialist aggrandizement which he felt that Greece ought to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... environment, these traditions were in the main forgotten. Fragments of them, however, were from time to time gathered together, and, intermingled with later doctrines, were used by the priests as a means of increased self-aggrandizement and power. ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... inhumanity and cruelty and ambition? When the minions of despotism heard, in Europe, of the seizure of Pensacola, how did they chuckle, and chide the admirers of our institutions, tauntingly pointing to the demonstration of a spirit of injustice and aggrandizement made by our country, in the midst of an amicable negotiation! Behold, said they, the conduct of those who are constantly reproaching kings! You saw how those admirers were astounded and hung their heads. You saw, too, when that illustrious man, who presides over us, adopted his pacific, ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay

... the war nearly all the charges that were brought by the peace party Federalists against the last war, to denounce it as an unrighteous, unholy, and damnable war; to hold up our government to the eyes of the world as the aggressors in the conflict; to charge it with motives of conquest and aggrandizement; to parade and portray in the darkest colors all the horrors of war; to dwell upon its cost ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... and uninterrupted success attended the reign of the king of Babylon. The aggrandizement of the city was without a parallel in history. It appeared to have become the leading passion of the monarch's mind. The reader may have a faint idea of the glory of the city when he remembers that it was a regular square, forty-five miles in ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones

... spirit and for the purposes for which it was established, an equilibrium between the States, as grouped in sections, was essential. When the Territory of Missouri constitutionally applied for admission as a State into the Union, the struggle between State rights and that sectional aggrandizement which was seeking to destroy the existing equilibrium gave rise to the contest which shook the Union to its foundation, and sowed the seeds of geographical divisions, which have borne the most noxious weeds that have choked our political vineyard. Again, in 1861, Missouri appealed to the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities,—the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... the next step in the aggrandizement of individual fortunes. The few who could center in themselves, by grace of Government, the banking and manipulation of the people's money and the restricting or inflating of money issues, were immediately vested with an extraordinary power. It was a sovereign ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... been persuaded to sacrifice to the Grecian Muses and Graces, he would never have brought a most illustrious military and civil career to a most unseemly conclusion; through passion and unreasonable love of power and insatiable desire of self-aggrandizement driven to terminate his course in an old age of cruelty and ferocity. Let this, however, be judged of by the facts as they ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... real psychologist, in getting his riches, will pass on to others that which he has. The real psychologist, in getting more power, will share it with others and will use it for the good of others, as well as for his own personal aggrandizement. ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush

... various artists who only consider their own self-aggrandizement; one is compelled to realize that, with such low aims, the artist is bound to fall short of highest achievement. It is our right attitude towards the best in life and the future, that is of real value to us. How often people greet you with the words: 'Well, how is the world treating you to-day?' ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... of seeming success, is brought to a close. Of a fallen man I would say nothing; but, for the sake of Humanity, Louis Napoleon should be exposed. He was of evil example, extending with his influence. To measure the vastness of this detriment is impossible. In sacrificing the Republic to his own aggrandizement, in ruling for a dynasty rather than the people, in subordinating the peace of the world to his own wicked ambition for his boy, he set an example of selfishness, and in proportion to his triumph was mankind corrupted in ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... directly to him was her Canadian dominion; and, strictly speaking, this is true, it being admitted that the campaign by which the Indian empire was virtually won was not planned by him, though brought to a successful issue during his ministry. But material aggrandizement, though the only tangible, is not the only real or lasting effect of a war policy. More may be gained by crushing a formidable rival than by conquering a province. The loss of her Canadian possessions was only one of a series of disasters suffered by France, which radically affected the future ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... which compel one to question what is a representative man of the colored race. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others lived during the reconstruction period. To have achieved something for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative. The street corner politician, who through questionable methods or even through skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court House, may be written up in the local ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... the nation was thrust suddenly and half unwillingly into the main stream of international events by the Spanish-American War. Though this war made the United States a world power, commercial or political aggrandizement played no part in her entry into the struggle. It arose solely from the intolerable conditions created by Spanish misrule in Cuba, and intensified by armed rebellion since 1895. Whatever slight hope or justification for non-intervention remained was destroyed by the blowing up of the U. S. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... mode of carrying out this terrible and self-given pledge was that Ali should resume his plans of aggrandizement exactly where he had left them. He succeeded in acquiring the pachalik of Janina, which was granted him by the Porte under the title of "arpalik," or conquest. It was an old custom, natural to the warlike ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... they are too busily engaged in laying up money—derived from the blood and tears of the blacks. The fact is they are too servile, they love to have Masters too well!!!!!! Some of our brethren, too, who seeking more after self aggrandizement, than the glory of God, and the welfare of their brethren, join in with our oppressors, to ridicule and say all manner of evils falsely against our Bishop. They think, that they are doing great things, when they get in company with ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... pageantry of 1887 and 1897, when every nation and tribe and kindred and people of the Greater Britain sent representatives to London to celebrate the jubilee and diamond jubilee of the Empress-Queen, to whose aggrandizement he had ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... and that would make the humble life of this same poor woman beautiful and happy and sweet in its humility; that would give us a nation of statesmen in place of, with now and then an exception, a nation of politicians, each one bent upon his own personal aggrandizement at the expense of the general good; that would go far, ay, very far toward solving our great and hard-pressing social problems with which we are already face to face; that, in short, would make each man a prince among men, and each woman ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine

... by the new popularity and honours which followed the success of his mission, Themistocles now began to consummate the vast schemes he had formed, not only for the aggrandizement of his country, but for the change in the manners of the citizens. All that is left to us of this wonderful man proves that, if excelled by others in austere virtue or in dazzling accomplishment, he stands unrivalled for the profound and far-sighted nature ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... views in common with the Emperor, against the Turks. But these two powers would, at any time, have gladly quitted England, to coalesce with France, as being the power which they met every where, opposed as a barrier to all their schemes of aggrandizement. When, therefore, the present King of Prussia took the eccentric measure of bidding defiance to France, by placing his brother-in-law on the throne of Holland, the two empires immediately seized the occasion of soliciting an alliance with France. The motives for this appeared so plausible, that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... by natives. These were the condottieri. Their leaders introduced cavalry and more skillful methods of fighting. But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At the same time intrigue and state-craft were the instruments of political aggrandizement. One of these new leaders was Sforza Attendolo, whose ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... when we declared war against Germany, the reason was not to make the world safe for democracy, for there are only two real reasons why wars are fought. One is greed and the other self-protection. Thank God, we have never been greedy or jealous of the prosperity of a neighbor. National aggrandizement is not ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... those of different races. Already those who think otherwise must begin to think and plan for such a future if the supreme opportunity of the final peace is not to be lost, and if we are to be saved from being again sucked down into the whirlpool of military aggrandizement and rivalry. In time of peace all the nations have been preparing for war. In the time of war let all men of good-will prepare for peace. The Christian conscience must be awakened to the magnitude of the issues. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... the greatest prosperity, and Maria Theresa the most illustrious queen in Europe. Her renown filled the civilized world. Through her whole reign, though she became the mother of sixteen children, she devoted herself with untiring energy to the aggrandizement of her empire. She united with Russia and Prussia in the infamous partition of Poland, and in the banditti division of the spoil she annexed to her own dominions twenty-seven thousand square miles and two ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... without a dollar and with no education, and that for generations they had been taught to rely entirely upon others for guidance and support. They became, therefore, at once the easy prey of unscrupulous men, who used them for their personal aggrandizement, were subjected to every evil influence, and did not discover for years the impositions practiced upon them. They were indolent and extravagant, and eager to buy on a credit everything the planter or merchant would sell them. The planter had nothing except the land, which, with ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... patriot lingering in prison, ever entered the mind of the extortioner. There was nothing but self then, nothing but the promptings of his own avarice, which could view with indifference the miseries of others, so long as they should redound to his own benefit and aggrandizement. I tell you that man dare not deny a word I utter. He knows that every one is true, and if my language could wither him with shame, could make him the detestation of the world, I would speak yet stronger, for pity to him is but contempt for those ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... could have induced me to take once more the sword in my hand. For my own part, Sir Richard, when I have reflected how many of my loyal and devoted friends perished by the sword and by proscription, or died indigent and neglected in a foreign land, I have often, sworn that no view to my personal aggrandizement should again induce me to agitate a title which has cost my followers so dear. But since so many men of worth and honour conceive the cause of England and Scotland to be linked with that of Charles Stuart, I must follow their brave example, and, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... favours, however, did not render them untrue to the general interests of the nation, or betray them into a corrupt acquiescence with the absolute tendencies of the Crown. At that time, as at all others, while duly reverencing the royal prerogatives, they resolutely opposed themselves to the undue aggrandizement of the kingly power at the expense of the other estates of the realm. It was within the precincts of the City, at the metropolitan church of St. Paul's, that the articles of Magma Charta were first proposed ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. [*The words quoted are to be found not in St. Augustine's works, but Can. Apud. Caus. xxiii, qu. 1]): "True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good." For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... and influence of Secretary Hay, freedom of commerce was secured, and the division of China among the powers has been prevented. In our relations with China, we have pursued a disinterested policy of disavowal of territorial aggrandizement, and a disposition to respect the rights of that Government, confining our interests to the peaceful development of trade. Secretary Hay never hesitated on all proper occasions to assert our influence to preserve its independence ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... the orator and brother-in-law of T. Pomponius Atticus, was born about 102 B.C. He was aedile in 67, praetor in 62, and for the three following years propraetor in Asia, where, though he seems to have abstained from personal aggrandizement, his profligacy and ill-temper gained him an evil notoriety. After his return to Rome, he heartily supported the attempt to secure his brother's recall from exile, and was nearly murdered by gladiators in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... in connection with the great event we celebrate, which impressively illustrate the interposition of Divine Providence in our behalf. We sought from a nation ruled by one whose ambition was boundless and whose scheme for aggrandizement knew neither the obligations of public morality nor the restraints of good faith, the free navigation of the Mississippi River, and such insignificant territory as would make such navigation useful. While our efforts toward the accomplishment ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... Colonna and Orsini were at open war with each other, but after much fighting they made peace on a basis of alliance against the pope. Thus further weakened, he felt more than ever that he had only his own kin to rely upon, and his thoughts were ever turned on family aggrandizement. He had annulled Lucrezia's marriage with Sforza in 1497, and, unable to arrange a union between Cesare and the daughter of Frederick, king of Naples (who had succeeded Ferdinand II. the previous year), he induced the latter by threats to agree to a marriage between the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... number of vassal states owning allegiance to a central suzerain state, had already broken hopelessly down, so far as allegiance was concerned. For some time, the object of each vassal ruler had been the aggrandizement of his own state, with a view either to independence or to the hegemony, and the result was a state of almost constant warfare. Accordingly, the entries in the Ch'un Ch'iu refer largely to covenants entered into between contracting rulers, official visits from one to another of these ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... displeased with the restoration, and still more with the aggrandizement of the family of Lenox, his hereditary enemies; and entertained fears lest his own eventual succession to the crown of Scotland should be excluded by his rival, who had formerly advanced some pretensions to it. The earl of Murray found his credit ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... may seem insignificant. They left little trace in the chronicles of olden times. Yet those petty incidents have proved decisive events in the annals of modern humanity. We see those events happening from generation to generation without any apparent connection. Yet somehow they all made for the aggrandizement of the family. We see successive Princes acquiring through marriage and inheritance possessions in scattered and remote outposts of the Holy Roman Empire. Yet somehow all those outposts became eventually milestones ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... Civil War in 1865. Of scarcely less importance is the fact that the decisive motive behind the different groups in Congress at every great crisis of the period under discussion was sectional advantage or even sectional aggrandizement. If Webster ceased to be a particularist after 1824 and became a nationalist before 1830, it was because the interests of New England had undergone a similar change; or, if Calhoun deserted about the same time the cause of nationalism and became ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... full discretion and in all a prevailing influence over the pecuniary rewards of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in the latter which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the former." "We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... in the hands of the minority. There is nothing new in this, however, as any cool-headed man may see in this enlightened republic of our own, daily examples in which the majority-principle works purely for the aggrandizement of a minority clique. It makes very little difference how men are ruled; they will be cheated; for, failing of rogues at head-quarters to perform that office for them, they are quite certain to set to work to devise some ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Aggrandizement" :   self-aggrandisement, aggrandize, increase, ego trip, aggrandisement, step-up



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