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Edify   Listen
verb
Edify  v. i.  To improve. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Edify" Quotes from Famous Books



... journal's contributors is that great traveller, hotel-builder, epigrammatist and kite-flyer, Mr. George Francis Train. So The Revolution, from the start, will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex and nonplus its friends. But it will compel attention; it will conquer a hearing. Its business management is in the good hands of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who has long been known as one of the most indefatigable, honest, obstinate, faithful, cross-grained and noble-minded ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of God, that Christians should be often asserting the things of God to each other; and that by their so doing, they should edify one another. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... noble and fruitful land, where prosperity should have banished almost the remembrance of crime; on the arrays of our police that ever remind us of the noxious elements of our communities; and think, too, of our daily press that might edify a virtuous public by accounts of incessant progress and well doing, but which, faithful to the cause of truth, must ever teem with the harrowing evidence of the depravity of our fellow-beings. And again turn to the scene that so frequently closes upon the career of the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... venerable Pontiff invited so many from Italy and all parts of the Christian world to take part with him in celebrating these canonizations, and, at the same time, the eighteen hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the blessed Apostles, the founders of the Church. His object was to edify, to place in contrast with, and in opposition to, the worldly and unbelieving spirit of the time the teachings and the solemn offices of religion, together with the power of holiness, so admirably shown forth in the lives ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... seemed to be a call for some instruction fitted to confirm these new believers in the life of obedience. Mr. Muller accordingly followed these evangelists in England, Ireland, and Scotland, staying in each place from one week to six, and seeking to educate and edify those who had been led to Christ. Among the places visited on this errand in 1875, were London; then Kilmarnock, Saltwater, Dundee, Perth, Glasgow, Kirkentilloch in Scotland, and Dublin in Ireland; then, returning ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, should lend them voices from the dead, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... it. She read me a very clever scene about a weak young parson bent on pleasing himself; and offered to lend me the book, but I thought it would not edify Will Walker. But, no doubt, you ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... they inflict no corporal punishment, by banishment, imprisonment, branding, slitting, cropping, striking, whipping, dismembering, or killing. Not over their souls; for, them they desire by this government to gain, Matth. xviii. 15; to edify, 2 Cor. x. 8, and xiii. 10; and to save, 1 Cor. v. 5. Only this government ought to be impartial and severe against sin, that the flesh may be destroyed, 1 Cor. v. 5. It is only destructive to corruption, which is deadly and destructive to the soul. Thus the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... information revolved and arranged itself; and he early formed the purpose of doing something effectual for its illustration. Element by element the plan of the "Family Expositor" evolved, and he set to work on a New Testament Commentary, which should at once instruct the uninformed, edify the devout, and facilitate the studies of the learned. Happy is the man who has a "magnum opus" on hand! Be it an "Excursion" poem, or a Southey's "Portugal," or a Neandrine "Church History,"—to the fond projector there is no end of congenial occupation, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... speaking with unknown tongues to the early Corinthians; we cannot fully understand our own speech, and we fear lest there be not a sufficient number of interpreters present to make our utterance edify. But there! (Go on straight to ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... no loser for being the first messenger of good news." So saying, he gave a signal to the Chancellor to take away Wildrake, whom he judged, in his present humour, to be not unlikely to communicate some former passages at Woodstock which might rather entertain than edify the wits ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... continue in use, except as books of reference, but old Prayer Books do hold their place in parish churches, and the spectacle of congregations trying to worship in unison with books some of which contained the reading of 1880, others that of 1883, and still others that of 1886 would scarcely edify. Theoretically, let it be freely granted, the "driblet method" of amendment is the proper one for both Prayer Book and Constitution, but the fact that the Convention had eyes to see that this was a case to which the maxims of pure mathematics did ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... that, though I do not believe that an intention to edify is any excuse for slipshod thought or intellectual dishonesty, I am speaking now mainly from the point of view of those who are enquiring into metaphysical truth for the guidance of their own religious and practical life, rather than from the ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... literary works to Appear in print were also occasioned by the work of his calling and of his office in the Wittenberg congregation. He had no other object in view than to edify his congregation and to lead it to Christ when, in 1517, he published his first independent work, the Explanation of the Seven Penitential Psalms. On Oct 31 of the same year he published his 95 Theses against Indulgences. These were indeed intended as controversial theses for ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of doctrinal ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... token," announced the elder Doane, crushingly, "thar's trash in Virginny thet don't edify Kaintuck folks none by movin' ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... Northiam," as Wood calls him, and indeed his name carries a symbol of his father's sanctity. Wood has given a few particulars of John, who, he says, "was a learned divine, and frequent preacher of the time, and wrote, 1. Fruitful Instructions and Necessary Doctrine, to edify in the Fear of God, &c., 1587. 2. Fruitful Instructions for the General Cause of Reformation, against the Slanders of the Pope and League, &c., 1589. 3. Certain Choice Grounds and Principles of our Christian Religion, with their several Expositions, by Way of Questions ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... is not my primary purpose to edify, entertain, or instruct a million women with poems, stories, and fashion-hints. Mr. Bok may think it is. He is merely the innocent victim of a harmless delusion, and he draws a salary for being deluded. To be frank and confidential ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... of their verses; in that singing they give delight, or they edify, or they edify and ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... the books, and now the bells, And now our act, the preacher tells, To edify the people; All our divinity is news, And we have made of equal use The pulpit and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... entertain somewhat mixed feelings with regard to the Press. As long as I can remember, practically, the War Office has provided a sort of Aunt Sally for the young men of Fleet Street to take cock-shies at when they can think of nothing else to edify their readers with, and uncommonly bad shots a good many of them have made. Assessment at the hands of the newspaper world confronts every public department. Nor can this in principle be objected to; healthy, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... not edify if I were to describe all we saw at Jerusalem. I have written of it more fully elsewhere,[1] and I can never hope to convey the remarkably vivid way in which it brought home to me the truth of the Gospel narrative. But I ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... answer: Because they are no longer needed. The grace which the Apostolic disciples received was for their personal sanctification. The gift of tongues which they exercised was intended by Almighty God to edify and enlighten the spectators, and to give Divine sanction to the Apostolic ministry. But now that the Church is firmly established, and the Divine authority of her ministry is clearly recognized, these miracles are no longer necessary. St. Gregory illustrates this point by a happy comparison: ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... putting on a cuirass of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation, [5:9]for God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, [5:10] who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we may live together with him. [5:11]Wherefore exhort one another, and edify one another, as ...
— The New Testament • Various

... said, "you are the man needed to shake the world from one end to the other; with this sign you will overthrow; with this sign you will edify; in hoc ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the slaves on his plantation outside of Savannah. George Liele established a school in connection with his church in Jamaica, hoping to develop the minds of his communicants that he might properly edify their souls. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... Fatima had made her obeisance, the princess said, "My good mother, I have one thing to request, which you must not refuse me; it is, to stay with me, that you may edify me with your way of living, and that I may learn from your good example." "Princess," said the counterfeit Fatima, "I beg of you not to ask what I cannot consent to without neglecting my prayers and devotion." "That shall be no hindrance to you," answered the princess; ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... many charms for the seeker after new things. He may be passionately fond of churches; if so, the trinity here to be seen, and the history of their founders and prelates, and the important part which they played in church affairs, will edify him greatly. If romance fills his or her mind, there is no more convenient centre than Tours from which to "do" the chateaux of the Loire. If it be French history, or the study of modern economic or commercial conditions, the past activities and ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... to her own house. After awhile the Queen said to her husband, "O King of the age, Hasan's lady-mother cannot take up her abode with her son and leave the Wazir; neither can she tarry with the Wazir and leave her son." "Thou sayest sooth," replied the King, and bade edify a third palace beside that of Hasan, which being done in a few days he caused remove thither the goods of the Wazir, and the Minister and his wife took up their abode there. Now the three palaces communicated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Addition. Produce her to us in her neat Country Apparel, such as she appear'd in, on her intended Departure to her Parents; for such best becomes her Innocence, and beautiful Simplicity. Such a Dress will best edify and entertain. The flowing Robes of Oratory may indeed amuse and amaze, but will never strike ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... conscientious teachers of the people, whether it is not their duty to avoid discussions in the pulpit on mysteries which never edify, because never understood; and to confine their discourses to such topics as those indicated in the Sermon of Jesus on the Mount. Such, at least, appears to be the proper duty of a national establishment! Empirics may raise the fury of fanaticism about mysteries with impunity—every absurdity ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... "ask Rachel! If she broke her back to-morrow she would have at least twenty good reasons for congratulation with which to edify me for the first time we met. Wouldn't you, dear? I am quite sure you would accept it as ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the author of "Robinson Crusoe," "the observations on this most preposterous piece of Church work are so many, they cannot come into the compass of this paper; but if the money raised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have it, as is very frequent, in like cases, written over the door in capital letters: 'This church was re-edified anno 1706, at the expense and by the charitable contribution of the enemies of the reformation of our morals, and to the eternal scandal and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... and illusions of the demon. There is then reason to believe that all the apparitions of this kind, and all these stories, are false, and must be absolutely rejected, as more fit to keep up the superstition and idle credulity of the people than to edify ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... edify the Arcadians, and to give myself pleasure, I shall be to-day a virtuous son, conducting his own beautiful ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... towards the old man. "Father, father! You ought to edify us by your death. By deferring it, you will, without doubt, commit some bad action which will destroy the fruit of your good deeds. Besides, the power of God is infinite. Perhaps your example ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... cartridge has failed to reach its mark from lack of powder to propel it. The prime duty of God's ambassador is to arouse the attention of souls before his pulpit; to stir those who are indifferent; to awaken those who are impenitent; to cheer the sorrow-stricken; to strengthen the weak, and edify believers An advocate in a criminal trial puts his grip on every juryman's ear So must every herald of Gospel-truth demand and command a hearing, cost what it may: but that hearing he never will ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... attended. A mutual improvement class—the oldest in the town—likewise exists in connection with St. Paul's. It was established by the Rev. S. F. Page, and is conducted on principles well calculated to regulate, illumine, and edify the youths who mar and make empires at it. A temperance society, in which the Rev. Mr. Acworth, who is a "Bright water for me" believer, has taken praiseworthy interest, has furthermore got a footing in St. Paul's, and beyond that ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... is very much a different matter and occupies a place in Mr. Belloc's work difficult to discuss. It is frankly a novel, written as novels are, to entertain, to edify and to perform the spiritual functions of poetry and good literature. It is also unique in that it contains a story of love, a motive largely absent from ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... are like to edify much from a dumb preacher. This will not pass, I must examine the contents of him a little closer.—O thou confessor, confess who thou art, or thou art no friar of this world!—[He comes to LORENZO, who struggles with him; his Habit flies open, and discovers a Sword; GOMEZ starts ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps a private book to prove he was not. You are at first faintly reminded of some of the vagaries of the morbid religious diarist; but at a moment's thought the resemblance disappears. The design of Pepys is not at all to edify; it is not from repentance that he chronicles his peccadilloes, for he tells us when he does repent, and, to be just to him, there often follows some improvement. Again, the sins of the religious diarist are of a very formal pattern, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated, it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in that high rivalry, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Why do we keep so many else in Pension that ne'er drew Sword, but to talk, and rail at the malignant Party; to libel and defame 'em handsomly, with pious useful Lyes, Which pass for Gospel with the common Rabble, And edify more than Hugh Peter's Sermons; And make Fools bring more Grist to the publick Mill. Then, Sir, to wrest the Law to our convenience Is no small, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... him that he wished to have nothing to do with this business, that he washed his hands of it, and that he would confine himself to conveying the decisions on both sides, and affording a refuge to Brother Nepomucene, partly out of Christian charity, and partly to edify his monks by the example of a truly devout man. According to him, Brother Nepomucene would be the second of that name placed in the front rank of the heavenly host by virtue of the canons ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... Prose tales were written in astonishing quantities, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by those pious authors who, under pretext of edifying and amusing their readers at the same time, began by amusing, and frequently forgot to edify. They put into their collections all they knew in the way of legends, jokes, and facetious stories. England produced several such collections; their authors usually add a moral to their tales, but sometimes omit it, or else they simply ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... believe, St. Ignatius. Not very far from this part of the building there used to be a statue of St. Patrick; but it was removed to one side, awhile since, either to make room for some other ornament, or to edify those belonging "ould Ireland" who may happen to sit near its present position. Towards the higher end, and on each side of the church, there is an opening, projecting back several yards. A gallery occupies ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... In letters the Saracens embraced every topic that can amuse or edify the mind. In later times, it was their boast that they had produced more poets than all other nations combined. In science their great merit consists in this, that they cultivated it after the manner of the Alexandrian Greeks, not after the manner of the European Greeks. They perceived that ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... gives us chapter and verse for this statement; furthermore, the same authority, has described—in his Etudes et Portraits—the enormous travail of Maupassant in pursuit of style—he, seemingly, the most spontaneous writer of his generation. His books offend, delight, startle, and edify thousands of readers. That they have done absolute harm we are not prepared to say; book wickedness is, after all, an academic, not a vital question. If all the wicked books that have seen the light of publication ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... and it appoints commissioners to inquire as to all houses pulled down and all land converted from pasture into tillage since the 4th Henry VII. The commissioners were to take security by recognizance from offenders, and to re-edify the houses and re-convert the land into tillage, and to assess the tenants for life toward the repairs. The amount expended under order of the commissioners was made recoverable against the estate, and ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... great influence. The heroic, the holy, I lack. They are contemptuous. They fail in sympathy with humanity. The voice of nature they bring me to hear is not divine, but ghastly, hard, and ironical. They do not illuminate me: they do not edify me." Is not this the German of to-day? If Emerson were with us now he would see, as we all see, how the age of idealism and spiritual power in Germany that gave the world the great composers and the great poets and philosophers—Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... "beautiful" will be ethical and not aesthetic merely. Morality penetrates all things, it is the soul of all things. Beauty may clothe it on, whether it is false morality and an evil soul, or whether it is true and a good soul. In the one case the beauty will corrupt, and in the other it will edify, and in either case it will infallibly and inevitably have an ethical effect, now light, now grave, according as the thing is light or grave. We cannot escape from this; we are shut up to it by the very conditions of our being. For the moment, it is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... will see at the ballet that you are in error about women at present, Richard. That admirable institution which our venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you. I assure you I used, from reading The Pilgrim's Scrip, to imagine all sorts of things about them, till I was taken there, and learnt that they are very like us after all, and then they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... less zeal than Davies, and more foresight. Though equally anxious to pull down and destroy, he was not so certain that the fragments would re-edify themselves into a habitable fabric; and as he liked the comforts he enjoyed in the present state of things, he was not inclined to lay the foundation of a republic, till he was certain of getting a good apartment in it himself. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... the country; the poorer classes were learning to read; and nothing in the shape of cheap literature was provided to meet their new craving, except mischievous broadsheets and worthless doggerel. Hannah More set to work to supply something healthy to amuse, instruct, and edify the new order of readers. She produced regularly every month for three years, three tracts—simple, pithy, vivacious, consisting of stories, ballads, homilies, and prayers. She was sometimes assisted by one of her sisters and two or three friends; but the burden of the work, including ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... and totter like Etna in an earthquake—a Burns, made an exciseman, gradually descends toward the low level of his trade—or a De Quincey takes to living on laudanum, and the public, instead of seeking to reform and re-edify each brilliant begun ruin, shouts out, "Raze, raze it to its foundation." Because the sun is eclipsed, they would howl him away! Because one blot has lighted on an imperishable page, they would burn it up! Let us hope, that as our age is fast becoming ashamed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various



Words linked to "Edify" :   teach, learn, enlighten



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