Sublime Quotes - Page 20

• As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

  Victor Hugo

  Mean, Views, Source

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.12464, Delphi Classics

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• There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

  Eric Hoffer

  Giving, Literature

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Enchanting, Charm

  Letter to Sophie Germain, April 30, 1807.

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• Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Symphony, Ears

  Howards End (1910) ch. 5

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• A sublime faith in human imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray.

  Havelock Ellis

  Faith, Cherish, Humans

  Havelock Ellis (1930). “Fountain of Life”

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• If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

  Denis Diderot

  Essentials, Thieves, Wickedness

  "Rameau's Nephew". Book by Denis Diderot, 1805.

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• The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

  Mason Cooley

  Writing, Interesting, Literature

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• A sacred pride should grip us of not being satisfied with the mediocre but to strive (for we can do it, if we want to) with the exertion of all our strength to attain the highest. Let us scorn what is of this earth, let us ignore what is of heaven, let us leave absolutely everything worldly behind us in order to hasten to the abode out of this world, in the proximity of the sublime deity. We do not need to think of stepping back. Of being satisfied with second rank, let us strive for dignity and glory. To attain the highest.

  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

  Pride, Thinking, Order

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• Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it.

  Michael Shermer

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Struggle

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• We humans, though troubled and warlike, are also the dreams, thinkers, and explorers inhabiting one achingly beautiful planet, yearning for the sublime, and capable of the magnificent.

  Carolyn Porco

  Beautiful, Dream, Planets

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• Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

  Denis Diderot

  Doe, Useless, Whether God Exists

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• The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.

  Jacques-Louis David

  Philosophy, Artist, Should Have

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• The first contributing factor to a happy home is the sublime virtue of loyalty, one of the noblest attributes of the human soul.

  David O. McKay

  Loyalty, Home, Soul

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• I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Creative, Focus, Details

  Ayelet Waldman (2017). “A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life”, p.13, Knopf

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• It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy.

  Polly Toynbee

  Happiness, Pain, People

  "It is not fanciful to make the pursuit of happiness a political imperative" by Polly Toynbee, www.theguardian.com. June 15, 2006.

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• Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?

  Pierre Schaeffer

  Civilization, Baroque Music, Western

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• I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

  Keanu Reeves

  Sorry, Apology, Noble

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

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• Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

  Alexander Pope

  Design, Genius, Literature

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• Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.

  James K. Polk

  Country, Patriotic, Contentment

  James K. Polk (2009). “Messages and Papers of the Presidents: James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and Franklin Pierce”, p.2479, Wildside Press LLC

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• Most of the things that really matter require faith. How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know that Mozarts Jupiter Symphony is sublime and beautiful? There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - How do I know that two plus two equals four? There are different layers, different types of knowing.

  N. T. Wright

  Beautiful, Two, Symphony

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• There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.

  Gregory Benford

  Real, Math, Iron

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• I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother. I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment.

  Pope John Paul II

  Mother, Home, Kissing

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• For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

  Sam Abell

  Alaska, Japan, Australia

  "A Life in Photos: Q&A with Sam Abell". Interview with Jenny Wells, uknow.uky.edu. July 20, 2012.

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• By a route obscure and lonely Haunted by ill angels only, Where an eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule -- From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE, out of TIME.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Lonely, Angel, Night

  Edgar Allan Poe (2014). “Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)”, p.745, Ageless Reads

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• Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Baby, Peace, War

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