Sublime Quotes - Page 16

• In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, America, Sometimes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.452

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• We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Atheism, Noble

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• Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.

  Anatole France

  Science, Thinking, Brain

  Anatole France (1920). “The garden of Epicurus”

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• The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined. But, notwithstanding this, the more light get, the more thankful we ought to be, for by this means we have the greater range for satisfactory contemplation. time the bounds of light will be still farther extended; and from the infinity of the divine nature, and the divine works, we may promise ourselves an endless progress in our investigation them: a prospect truly sublime and glorious.

  Joseph Priestley

  Nature, Mean, Science

  Joseph Priestley (1780). “The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley”, p.373

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• I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Jesus, Men

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.185

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• The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object-Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes it. It also paints men, it aggrandizes them, it exaggerates them, it creates heroes and gods. History only depicts man, and paints him such as he is.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Nature, Philosophy, Hero

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• The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.

  Max Weber

  Art, Philosophy, Fate

  Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.155, Routledge

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• To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

  Ray Bradbury

  Beautiful, Book, Writing

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• The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Beautiful, Running, Adventure

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.57, Courier Corporation

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• In the sublime days before 11 September 2001, when the powerful were routinely attacking and terrorising the weak, and those dying were black or brown-skinned non-people living in faraway places such as Zaire and Guatemala, there was no terrorism. When the weak attacked the powerful, spectacularly on 9/11, there was terrorism.

  John Pilger

  Powerful, People, Black

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• We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

  Terri Windling

  Dark, Age, Experience

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• [Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.

  Honore de Balzac

  Inspiration, Communication, Past

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• The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill....[The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century....Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature.

  Kevin Myers

  Thinking, Skills, Two

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• The sun never sets. It is only an appearance due to the observer's limited perspective. And yet, what a sublime illusion it is.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Perspective, Sun, Illusion

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “Eckhart Tolle's Findhorn Retreat: Stillness Amidst the World”, p.19, New World Library

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• [Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Fall, Buddhism

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• He loved the soothing hour, when the last tints of light die away; when the stars, one by one, tremble through æther, and are reflected on the dark mirror of the waters; that hour, which, of all others, inspires the mind with pensive tenderness, and often elevates it to sublime contemplation.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Stars, Dark, Mirrors

  Ann Radcliffe (2015). “The Mysteries of Udolpho”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult… Many people are often wrong… Don’t bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

  Janeane Garofalo

  Nice, Acceptance, People

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.

  Albert Pike

  Strong, Teaching, People

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• Whether it's simply some fierce animal joining of mates or a sublime merging of souls, she is mine, and I am hers.

  Richelle Mead

  Animal, Soul, Joining

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Fiery Heart: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.169, Penguin

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• Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.

  Saul Bellow

  Brother, Father, Ambition

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• I imagine that the goddess of Love has come down from Olympus to visit a mortal. So as not to die of cold in this modern world of ours, she wraps her sublime body in great heavy furs and warms her feet on the prostrate body of her lover. I imagine the favorite of this beautiful despot, who is whipped when his mistress grows tired of kissing him, and whose love only grows more intense the more he is trampled underfoot. I shall call the picture "Venus in Furs

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Beautiful, Tired, Kissing

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• She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.

  Isabel Allende

  Mother, Wall, Fate

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• Love is deceitful and sublime. In its truest form, it brings out the best in all beings. At its worse, It's a tool used to manipulate and ruin any one who is stupid enough to hold it. Don't be stupid.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Stupid, Love Is, Tools

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• The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Fall, Eye, Light

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• The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

  Theodor Adorno

  Steps, Ridiculous

  Theodor W. Adorno (2013). “Aesthetic Theory”, p.269, A&C Black

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