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Magnify   Listen
verb
Magnify  v. t.  (past & past part. magnified; pres. part. magnifying)  
1.
To make great, or greater; to increase the dimensions of; to amplify; to enlarge, either in fact or in appearance; as, the microscope magnifies the object by a thousand diameters. "The least error in a small quantity... will in a great one... be proportionately magnified."
2.
To increase the importance of; to augment the esteem or respect in which one is held. "On that day the Lord magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel."
3.
To praise highly; to laud; to extol. (Archaic) "O, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together."
4.
To exaggerate; as, to magnify a loss or a difficulty.
To magnify one's self (Script.), to exhibit pride and haughtiness; to boast.
To magnify one's self against (Script.), to oppose with pride.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Magnify" Quotes from Famous Books



... are of the North are accustomed to the enormous; we have unearthly sunsets and the clouds magnify our hills. The Southern men see nothing but misproportion in what is enormous. They love to have things in order, and violence in art is odious to them. This high and dreadful roof had not been raised under the influences of the island; it had surely been designed ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... it was now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had previously associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there was little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... bringest forth and dost efface The ocean-ruling Nations, race by race, It is this living People, by Thy grace Who on the sea Shall magnify Thy name, who on the sea Shall glorify Thy name, who on the sea With myrrh and blood shall sacrifice to Thee At the altar-prow, Of all earth's oceans make our ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

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

... with an effort. It was this heat which was making him magnify trifles. Bailey was a fool. Probably there was nothing whatever wrong with this fellow Milbank. Probably he had some personal objection to the man, and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... capture by British cruisers. In this way a large number of American Captains with their ships were detained in France, to their distress, but to their Minister's satisfaction. He did not fail to note and magnify all "infractions" of the treaty, with the hope that they might be the means of annulling it in favor of England, and he did nothing to mitigate sufferings which were counts in his ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... Bloome dined with Whitelocke, and took occasion to magnify the respects of the Chancellor and his son, Grave Eric, to the Protector and to Whitelocke, who was not backward to join in those eulogies, and to acknowledge the respects. Berkman said that Canterstein was to bring ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... require little or no assistance from the graces of poetry; but poetry, if she would charm and instruct, must not be so haughty; she must be contented to borrow of the sciences, many of her choicest allusions, and many of her most graceful embellishments; and does it not magnify the character of true poesy, that she includes within herself all the scattered graces ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... of Alexandria riflemen who paraded before the lodgings of the President-elect, an escort of citizens and members of Congress to the Senate wing of the unfinished Capitol, and an inconsiderable illumination at night. At a later time, in an effort to magnify Jeffersonian simplicity, the story was invented that the President-elect rode unattended to Capitol hill and tied his horse to a tree ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... gratified to learn that the clock-manufacturers, at any rate, are taking time by the forelock and are already sending their goods to this country. So far are they, moreover, from cherishing animosity or desiring to magnify the Fatherland that they modestly label them "Westminster Chimes." It is pleasant to record that the Board of Trade, exhibiting the same spirit of self-abnegation, has insisted on substituting the time-honoured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

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

... among the chaste some are fearless and enjoy the freedom which courage and clear conscience give, others timid and suffer the oppression of their fears. Even among sinners some make the best of weaknesses and redeem them a great deal more than half, while others magnify smaller faults by lack of self-possession till they are an insupportable nuisance. We may well admit that from the successes of those days, those who succeed to our delight ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

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

... to error and to tyranny; and that, from amidst the obscurity in which he has lived, there will shine forth a glory which will efface that of the common herd of monarchs, the monuments of whose deeds perish in oblivion, notwithstanding the flatterers who erect and magnify them? ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... tribe increase, Thy light and glory ne'er decrease; Shine on and magnify the Word, And point the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... dearest. And finally the fatigue is often marked by a lack of control over the emotional expression, so that anger blazes forth more easily over trifles, and the tears come upon even a slight vexation. To be neurasthenic is to magnify the pins and pricks of life into calamities, and to be the victim of an abnormal state that is neither ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... doubtless, by the exercise of a little ingenuity make it appear that I owed my escape from Father Antoine's meshes to my own craft; and tell, in fine, as pretty a story of plots and counterplots as M. de Brantome has ever woven. Having no desire, however, to magnify myself and, at this time of day, scarcely any reason, I am fain to confess that the reverse was the case; and that while no man ever did less to free himself than I did, my adversary retained his grasp to the end, and had surely, but for a strange interposition, effected my ruin. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... Zouaves, another of the regiments distinguished in North Carolina, captured a rebel battery at the point of the bayonet. In the rebel account we are told how the brave General Toombs, with a whole brigade, retook the battery and defeated this single regiment, which they magnify into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... upon him to express transports on seeing the works of those who had been most eminent in their profession, whether they did or did not really raise his admiration; and the other as a scholar deeming it his duty to magnify the ancients above all competition, with an affected fervour, which the knowledge of their excellencies never inspired. Indeed, our young gentleman so successfully accommodated himself to the disposition of each, that long before their review was finished, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... occupy, are limited by the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connexion along which he is able to radiate any essential influence whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. Circumstances may magnify his importance for the moment; but, after all, any cable which he carries out upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud arising. Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an adult or responsible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... page to begin. Then Eudemon, asking leave of the viceroy, his master, so to do, with his cap in his hand, a clear and open countenance, ruddy lips, his eyes steady, and his looks fixt upon Gargantua, with a youthful modesty, stood up straight on his feet and began to commend and magnify him, first, for his virtue and good manners; secondly, for his knowledge; thirdly, for his nobility; fourthly, for his bodily beauty; and in the fifth place, sweetly exhorted him to reverence his father with all observancy, who was so careful ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... suggestive and affecting image. Such people are worth their weight in gold. Then there is a talker who is worth much silver, a man of irresistible geniality, who has a fund of pleasant banter for all present. This is a great art; banter, to be agreeable, must be of a complimentary kind; it must magnify the object it deals with—a perverse person may be bantered on his strength of character; a stingy person may be bantered on his prudence. There is, indeed, a kind of banter, not unknown in academical circles, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... them and raise them above the work-a-day world which will demand so large a share of their time and strength. The mechanic, the farmer, the man in any walk of life, who has early formed good habits of reading, is the one who will magnify his calling, and occupy the highest positions in it. And to the thousands of young people, in whose homes there is none of the atmosphere of culture or of the appliances for it, the public library ought to furnish the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... crystals are undoubtedly very much simpler than the changes that accompany the regulatory processes exhibited by the living egg, the striking resemblance between the phenomena themselves tempts us not to magnify the difference. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... third reason is, for that God will, in the forgiveness of sin, magnify the riches of his mercy; but this cannot be, if God shall suffer, or accept of such confession of sin, as is yet intermixed with those things that will darken the ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... myself, I will set forth more amply in the notice which I will give to the reader the motive that induced me to put my hand to the work of the present author, who has no need of trumpet and herald to exalt and magnify her(1) greatness, inasmuch as there is no human eloquence that could portray her more forcibly than she has portrayed herself by the celestial strokes of her own brush; I mean by her other writings, in which she has so well expressed the sincerity of her doctrines, the vivacity of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... My soul doth magnify the Lord, 47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 48 For he hath looked upon the low estate of his handmaid: For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. 49 For he that is mighty hath ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... "the mind, when in a healthy state, reposes as quietly before an insurmountable difficulty as before an ascertained truth," so, as I cannot get on, I have ceased to chafe, and am rather inclined to magnify the advantages of the detention, a necessary process, as you would think if you saw ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... particles of that organism, and each one of them has his own special task for the service of others. In the same manner, the cells united in an organism share among them the labor of fight for existence of the whole organism; they magnify the power of one capacity, and weaken another, and unite in one organ, in order the better to supply the requirements of the whole organism. And exactly in the same manner as with gregarious animals,—ants or bees,—the ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... a Lord Mayor's feast or a croquet tournament, to-morrow to a Ritualistic service, next day to the home of a homicide. I am free to confess that each has its special attractions for me. I am very much disposed to "magnify my office" in this respect, not from any foolish idea that I am "seeing life," as it is termed, but still from a feeling that the proper study of mankind is man in all ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... that came to the tobacconist he left to the city of Chichester to relieve it of certain of its poor rates; and the citizens still magnify Hardham's name. He died in 1772 and had the good sense to restrict the expense of his funeral to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

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

... the other is provoking. His was the amusing kind. It seemed, in truth, to be only the buoyancy and overflow of a vivacious mind, delighted with every thing delightful, in himself or others. He was always ready to magnify his own praise, but quite as ready to exalt his neighbor, if the channel of discourse ran that way: his own perfections being more completely within his knowledge, he rejoiced in them more constantly; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... In reply to their questions, Mr. Raleigh stated that the preceding day's disaster had been occasioned by a meerschaum, and had merely charred a table with its superficies of papers and pamphlets, which Capua had chosen to magnify for his own purposes; and the assemblage immediately turned its course inland and toward the brooks. The two who led soon distanced the rest, Capua trudging respectfully behind and keeping them in sight. Here, as they brushed along through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... reveal my secret! I have striven to resist, but I am powerless. Everything seems to magnify my love for you; all nature seems to be your accomplice; every effort that I make is in vain. I adore you ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... Ferdinand knew the path which the friar had pointed out to be the same that led to the rocks where his horses were stationed, and he pursued it with quick and silent steps. Julia, whose fears conspired with the gloom of night to magnify and transform every object around her, imagined at each step that she took, she perceived the figures of men, and fancied every whisper of the breeze the sound ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... you that you bring up mine own dear child in the same. I would have him, if I may, as dear unto Christ as I am, and as ready to leave all for Christ His sake, as I, his mother, have done. I say not this, God witteth, to magnify my poor deeds, the which I know well be vile enough and want as much and great washing in Christ His blood, as the worst sin that ever I did,—but, good mother, teach my boy of Christ! Count it not anything that he leaveth for Him. Yea, forsooth, ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... wrote in prose or verse reflects his contempt for earth's mighty and his sympathy for earth's million mites. His art, like that of his favorite author and prototype, Father Prout, was "to magnify what is little and fling a dash of the sublime into a two-penny post communication." Sense of earthly grandeur he had little or none. Sense of the minor sympathies of life—those minor sympathies that are common to all and finally swell into the major song of life—of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... large black worm comes along. It is an inch and a quarter long, and is engaged in the same quest as its lesser brother of the green, transparent coat. Magnify it enough times, say, many thousand times, and what a terrible-looking monster we should have—a traveling arch of contracting and stretching muscular tissue, higher than your head, and measuring off the ground a rod or more at a time, or standing twenty feet or more high, like ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

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

... fears of a lover may create, which are apt to magnify every favour conferred on a rival, and to see the little advances towards themselves through the other end of the perspective, it was impossible that Horatio's passion should so blind his discernment as to prevent his conceiving hopes from the behaviour of Leonora, whose fondness ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... alteration, the story of the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, who is held by all the inhabitants of the district of the Campo de Montiel to have been the chastest lover and the bravest knight that has for many years been seen in that neighbourhood. I have no desire to magnify the service I render thee in making thee acquainted with so renowned and honoured a knight, but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt make with the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my thinking, I have given thee condensed all the squirely drolleries that are ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... which we, of subsequent generations, have also cultivated; because, in studying the causes which produce the prodigious national prosperity with which your country has astounded the world, we become accustomed to admire, to magnify perhaps, the indomitable will, energy, labor, and civic and patriotic solidarity which constitute the energetic and abundantly productive type of ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

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

... already occupied by such fancies, another not more reasonable might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and believe his faculties to be vigorous ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... manifesting the same stupendous labor and ingenuity as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette—of endeavors, we repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct, and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify and perpetuate some grand primeval symbol. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... not ridicule, much less deny the power of ideas. On the contrary, we believe heartily in ideas, and in men of ideas. We accept ideas as forces of civilization, and we would magnify their office as teachers and helpers of man, in his poor strivings after good. Man is ever repeating the despondent cry of the Psalmist, 'Who will show us any good?' It is the mission of ideas, the ministering angels of civilization, to lift him into a realm of glorious communion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

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

... thus set afoot, we should proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, with as much judicial calmness as if the question related to a new Opossum. We should endeavour to ascertain, without seeking either to magnify or diminish them, all the characters by which our new Mammal differed from the Apes; and if we found that these were of less structural value, than those which distinguish certain members of the Ape order from others universally admitted to be of the same order, ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... can thank Luther for accomplishing it, while recognising his great defects, his faults of temper and the narrowness of his views; defects, I would add, which it were unnecessary to dwell on if Protestants did not magnify them into virtues, or if they did not illustrate the inherent ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... smarting, set out for the one happy spot he knew. The shadow lifted from his spirit as he drew near. He was already forming a plan for adding a fireplace and chimney to his house. He followed the secret path he had made with aim to magnify its secrets. He crossed the open glade, was, nearly at the shanty, when he heard voices—loud, coarse voices—coming from his shanty. He crawled up close. The door was open. There in his dear cabin were three tramps playing cards and drinking out of a bottle. On the ground beside them were his ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... a phrase or two," was the answer, spoken gravely but quite calmly. "I would not speak words of which I am ashamed; at the same time, it is well in these perilous days to use all caution, for an enemy can well distort and magnify the words he hears, till they sound like rank heresy. For myself I have no fear. I prize not my life greatly, though to die as a heretic, cut off from the Church of Christ, is a fearful thing to think of. Yet ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

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

... nostrils within. Of course these shelters did not offer so much security from danger as their occupiers fancied (I have already instanced how the recesses of a coal-hole had not been proof against invasion); but they were splinter proof. If husbands and fathers did magnify the protection they ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... Nimrods of Mankind his prey; When haughty Windsor heard through every wood Their shame, who durst be great, yet not be good; Who, drunk with power, and with ambition blind, Slaves to themselves, and monsters to mankind, Sinking the man, to magnify the prince, Were heretofore, what Stuarts have been since: Could he have look'd into the womb of Time, How might his spirit in prophetic rhyme, 10 Inspired by virtue, and for freedom bold, Matters of different import have foretold! How might his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... about and is coming this way, Great Bear. The French officers no doubt have the glasses that magnify, and, having seen us, are coming ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... He is of the same stuff as the ground he walks upon; there is no better stuff in the heavens above him, nor in the depths below him, than sticks to his own ribs. The celestial and the terrestrial forces unite and work together in him, as in all other creatures. We cannot magnify man without magnifying the universe of which he is a part; and we cannot belittle it without ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... with whom do live the spirits of them that depart | hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after | they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and | felicity; We praise and magnify thy holy Name for all thy | servants who have finished their course in thy faith and fear; | and we most humbly beseech thee that, at the day of the general | resurrection, we, and all they who are of the mystical body of | thy Son, may be set on his ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... from her husband new-return'd To his own country in the twentieth year, After such hardship. But prepare me, nurse, A bed, for solitary I must sleep, Since she is iron, and feels not for me. 200 Him answer'd then prudent Penelope. I neither magnify thee, sir! nor yet Depreciate thee, nor is my wonder such As hurries me at once into thy arms, Though my remembrance perfectly retains, Such as he was, Ulysses, when he sail'd On board his bark from Ithaca—Go, nurse, Prepare his bed, but not within the walls Of his own chamber ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... a professor at the University of Pisa, developing a telescope that would magnify to eight diameters, discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's rings. The story of his discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is another interesting illustration of the careful scientific reasoning of these early workers (R. 206). Galileo also made a number of discoveries in physics, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

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

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

... you forgot that 'tis I owe thanks to you, that you seek to magnify my simple act into so great deserving? They that of their kindness cheer my little suffering Christie's lonely life, deserve all the good that I can render them. My little maid prayed me to say unto you both that she sent you ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... made to bear too much of the burden of the bad developments of modern journalism. But I am very far from meaning to suggest that those bad developments are not very bad. So far from wishing to minimise the evil, I would in a real sense rather magnify it. I would suggest that the evil itself is a much larger and more fundamental thing; and that to deal with it by abusing poor journalists, doing their particular and perhaps peculiar duty, is like dealing with a pestilence by ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... work of this nature. Some people think he is wholly bad, and that although he occasionally assumes a virtue, he is but playing a part, and playing it but indifferently well at that. Others place him on a lofty pedestal, and magnify him into a hero ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... the intensity of the sensation. The very fact of unfamiliarity seems to give to the sensation a certain exciting character. As something new and strange, it for the instant slightly agitates and discomposes the mind. Being unable to classify it with its like, we naturally magnify its intensity, and so tend to ascribe it to a disproportionately ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion, utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulcher. They are immortalized not alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them rise in foreign countries as well—not of stone, it may be, but unwritten, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... little but the hard lesson "to bear," and that I had well studied. I had, as yet, made no friends. Boys are very tyrannical and very generous by fits. They will bully and oppress the outcast of a school, because it is the fashion to bully and oppress him—but they will equally magnify their hero, and are sensitively alive to admiration of feats of daring and wild exploit. With them, bravery is the first virtue, generosity the second. They crouch under the strong for protection, and they court the lavish from self-interest. In all this ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... nearer to us, that their broad expanses may be seen. We fail, however, signally with regard to the stars; for they are so very distant, and therefore such tiny points of light, that our mightiest telescopes cannot magnify them sufficiently to show any breadth ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... Magnify: to make a thing larger in fact or in appearance; to enlarge the appearance of a thing so that the parts may be ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... Gables" comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his townsmen's character and exposing in this book, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Ramazzini (1633-1714), and also by Sir Samuel Morland (or Moreland). This form has many defects, and even when the [v.03 p.0419] tube is bent through 45deg the readings are only increased in the ratio of 7 to 5. The wheel barometer of Dr R. Hooke, and the steel-yard barometer, endeavour to magnify the oscillation of the mercury column by means of a float resting on the surface of the mercury in the cistern; the motion of the float due to any alteration in the level of the mercury being rendered apparent by a change in the position of the wheel or steel-yard. The pendant barometer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... vows, no determinations that you think irrevocable. Leave the future to God. Now dry these dear eyes, and put old thoughts and memories of sorrow and of wrong most resolutely away from you. Be happy, as Our Lord meant all innocent creatures of His to be. And do not be tempted to magnify Greta's offence against friendship. She has acted according to her lights, and if they are of the kind that shine in marshy places, a better Light will shine upon her path one day. I know that you have real affection for her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... she always put a little magnesia into his beer, and things went on as comfortably as possible. Never magnify things, even to yourself. I don't suppose Lord George wants magnesia as yet, but you will understand what I mean." She said that she did; but she had not, in truth, quite comprehended the lesson as yet, nor could her father as yet teach it to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... of me was owing to the Bishop of Lisieux, her spiritual director, who, finding I was disposed to follow my profession, which out of his great love to me he most passionately desired, made it his business to magnify the few good qualities I was master of; and I am thoroughly persuaded that what applause I had then in the world was chiefly owing to his encouragement, for there was not a man in France whose approbation could give so much honour. His sermons had advanced him from a very ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

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

... all the cavalry, was instructed to move slowly forward over the two hills, and descending on the opposite side, to deploy his forces in two great wings to the right and left. He was secretly directed in this movement to magnify as much as possible the apparent dimensions of his force. Slowly the columns moved over the hills. Squadron after squadron, nearly all of them lancers, with their pennons flaunting gaily in the summer wind, displayed themselves deliberately and ostentatiously in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... least as exclusively her own. She had once been his idol, she was now a household drudge, and the imaginative homage which had been once hers was given to another." Froude's posthumous championship of Mrs. Carlyle may have led him to magnify unduly the importance of domestic disagreements. But however that may be, the opinions which he formed, and which Carlyle gave him the means of forming, did not increase the attractions of the duty he ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil? Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse can magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into an entangled jungle? Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects the ceaseless harsh music of the latter and the lazy ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... which was ever present to his thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale's Memories, may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living in it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which completely ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... be diseased action of the heart, almost before we can snatch a second glance. Or if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and of course patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all,—though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mouths of the heathen to set forth the praises of the idols, and to magnify a fleshly king ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... expulsion. She had already transgressed to a degree to warrant it, and had been warned the evening before to that effect. ("Ah," breathed Mrs. Bonnell at this admission). Communicate with Beverly's people? Absurd! Why magnify such a trivial matter? Girls had made believe to run away from the school before, and would doubtless do so again. They invariably ran back again and Beverly would do likewise when she got ready. She was probably with some friend in the neighborhood. She was in the habit of forming ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... Frank for hitting the right nail on the head every time," boasted Will, who never lost a chance to magnify the deeds of the one he admired above any among all ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... agent, and I magnify mine office," he said, as he took up his hat to go forth. "One branch of my duty is to fettle your horse; and in Flamborough they fettle them on stale fish." Mr. Mordacks strode with a military tramp, and a loud shout for the landlord, who had finished his joke by this ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... which he found no successor. The Origines, if it had remained, would undoubtedly have been a priceless storehouse of facts about the antiquities of Italy. Cato had an enlarged view of history. It was not his object to magnify Rome at the expense of the other Italian nationalities, but rather to show how she had become their greatest, because their truest, representative. The divisions of the work itself will show the importance he attached to an investigation of their early annals. We ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... were nothing but men and gods in the universe. But in the results of science the world is more and more, and man is less and less. The poet must come to the rescue, and place man again at the top, magnify him, exalt him, reinforce him, and match these wonders from without with equal wonders from within. Welcome to the bard who is not appalled by the task, and who can readily assimilate and turn into human emotions these vast deductions of the savants! The minor poets do nothing in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... thought there was no one his equal. He became their hero; he had only to give his orders, and they appointed their magistrates (23) at his bidding. But, indeed, a series of brilliant exploits entitled the Arcadians to magnify themselves. The first of these arose out of an invasion of Epidaurus by the Argives, which seemed likely to end in their finding their escape barred by Chabrias and his foreign brigade with the Athenians and Corinthians. Only, at the critical moment the Arcadians ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... good seed strangely sown, and their working formed one of those mysterious steps which led the foul-mouthed blasphemer to bitter repentance; who, when he had received mercy and pardon, felt impelled to bless and magnify the Divine grace with shining, burning thoughts and words. The poor profligate, swearing tinker became transformed into the most ardent preacher of the love of Christ—the well-trained author of The Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or Good News to the Vilest ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... conflicting reports concerning Susannah had been brought to the house, and Ephraim's courage failed. Why should he go if by seeing her he could neither give her pleasure nor do her good? It was natural that report, dwelling on what it could understand rather than on what was incomprehensible, should magnify Susannah's love for Halsey. No man in New Manchester who in the past month had chanced to catch sight of any maid holding secret parlance with any lover but now swore stoutly that ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

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

... Massachusetts reached them. They issued loyal addresses to William and Mary, in which they said: "Great was that day when the Lord who sitteth upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him[1]." "The Lord sitteth above the waterflood, and the Lord remaineth a king for ever." "The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." "O come, let us worship, and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker." "O magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before His footstool, for He is Holy." "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; bring presents, and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... many-sided unity of Truth, but he saw that all the prophets of the age, from Walt Whitman and Schopenhauer to Wells and Shaw, had become so by taking one side of truth and making it all of truth. It is so much easier to see and magnify a part than laboriously to strive to embrace ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... No one could enter these dark solitudes without feeling a deep impression of sublimity, especially if it be an hour of general stillness of the winds. The voices of animals and of birds, particularly the hammering of the woodpecker, serve to magnify our perceptions of grandeur. A very slight sound, during a calm in one of these deep woods, like the ticking of a clock in a vast hall, has a distinctness almost startling, especially if there be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... cynical observer may point to this as showing that the laws governing elections, under such circumstances, are the same, whether in party caucuses or in church councils; but Paul, in this case, saw the direct intervention of the Almighty, and his disposition to magnify his office was vastly increased thereby. He was especially strenuous, and one of his earliest public acts was to send to the gallows a poor author, who, in an unpublished work, had spoken severely regarding ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... "Your fears magnify that. I am quite certain that nobody would know you in broad daylight, disguised as you are now. So many years have flown since, that people have forgotten to think ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of the treatment of colored cadets, and of Smith in particular would not have been so convinced? When, therefore, any affront or any thing seemingly of that nature was offered me, I have been disposed, naturally I think, to unduly magnify it, because I expected it. This was hasty and unjust, and so I admit, now that I am better informed. What was apparently done to incommode or discourage me has been shown to have been done either for my own benefit or for some other purpose, not to my harm. ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... someone ride over the Long Divide. It was good for the eyes. I cannot tell quite how, but horse and rider were so sharp and clear-cut against the sky, that they looked very large and peculiar—there was something in the air to magnify. They stopped for a minute on the top of the Divide, and it seemed like a messenger out of the strange country at the farthest north—the place of legends. But, of course, it was only a traveller like ourselves, for in a half-hour she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker



Words linked to "Magnify" :   hyperbolise, gas, magnifier, dramatise, overdraw, magnification, mislead, photography, embroider, overstate, overstress, misinform, enlarge, understate, reduce, hyperbolize, overemphasise, brag, amplify, aggrandize, blow up, lard, gasconade, blow, boast



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