Sublime (philosophy)

"[S]ublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small..."

"The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a sublime passion may be produced. Sounds have a great power... Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder, or artillery, awakes a great and awful sensation in the mind, though we can observe no nicety or artifice in those sorts of music. The shouting of multitudes has a similar effect... the best-established tempers can scarcely forbear being borne down and joining in the common cry and common resolution of the crowd."

"There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous."

"A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than when it is smooth and polished."

"The sublime must be simple, the beautiful may be dressed and ornamented."

"The sentiments of the sublime strain the powers of the soul more, and therefore tire sooner."

"Sublime properties inspire esteem, but beautiful ones love."

"The sublime moves or touches, the beautiful charms."

"Sublime Lucretius poetry will pass away Only when Earth has seen its final day."

"A long duration is sublime. Is it of past time? it is noble; if it is foreseen in an immense futurity, it has in it something dreadful."

"I resolved, therefore, to bend my studies towards the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. But behold, I espy something in them not revealed to the proud, not discovered unto children, humble in style, sublime in operation, and wholly veiled over in mysteries. ...such are thy Scriptures as grew up together with thy little ones. But I much disdained to be held a little one; and big swollen with pride, I took myself to be some great man."

"In the Old Testament stories... the sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable."