aggrandize

• The object of the negotiation was not to aggrandize or to elevate himself or his friends, but to secure and perpetuate certain cardinal points of federal policy. —  Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Volume 2.
• A bunch of stars walk around in outlandishly priced outfits and self-aggrandize in between a few music numbers and sketches that are stiffer than the harshest winter breeze off of Lake Erie, and people fawn all over it.
• The Macedonian would find the empire which it was the labour of his life to aggrandize, frittered into parcels, modeled, remodeled, subjected to various dynasties; Turks, Greeks, Russians, still contending for portions of the territory which he had conjoined only to be dismembered; he would find in these little or no trace of his ever having existed; he would find that the unity of his vast political power had been severed before his body was yet entombed, and his prediction, that his funeral obsequies would be performed with bloody hands, verily fulfilled. —  Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV.
• If you consider the character of contest which so often takes place among kings for their crowns, and the selfish and tyrannous means they commonly take to aggrandize or secure their power, you will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that the office of Charity is to crown the King. —  A Joy For Ever (And Its Price in the Market)
• It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. —  The Federalist Papers

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms