Cornel West

I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself. I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts.

American Educator

Calvin Coolidge

Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.

American President

Lucy Larcom

Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it.

American Poet

Tom Rachman

I had pictured journalism as I'd seen it in the most ennobling films, where the reporter battles for the truth, propelled by conviction, and is triumphant. There are journalists who fit that ideal.

English Novelist

Immanuel Kant

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.

German Philosopher

Thorstein Veblen

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.

American Economist

Huston Smith

It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us.

American Theologian

Henry Taube

Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling.

Canadian Scientist

Richard Belzer

Cancer is a cosmic slap in the face. You either get discouraged or ennobled by it.

American Comedian

Christian Nestell Bovee

The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.

American Author

Understand that 'ennoble' can imply making something morally better, not just higher in status.

Improvement Aspect

'Ennoble' can be used metaphorically to describe enhancing inanimate objects or ideas.

Metaphoric Use

It often denotes an action benefiting a group, rather than an individual alone.

Community Perspective

Historically, 'ennoble' relates to the formal process of conferring a noble title.

Noble Rank Specifics

Being ennobled was often associated with ceremony or ritual in historical contexts.

Ceremony And Ritual

'Ennoble' in this sense means to make someone morally superior or more dignified.

Moral Elevation

The word suggests a transformation or enhancement of someone's character.

Character Transformation

 He was taking the voice of the people, the language of the people, elevating it into verse, and by doing so, ennobling the language and ennobling the people who spoke the language.