A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Edmund Burke
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”
“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.”
“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.”
“For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever”
“The mind of man possesses a sort of creative power on its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of things in the order and manner in which they were received by the senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to a different order. This power is called imagination.”
“So that poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions, than the other art. And I think there are reasons in nature, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand.”
“[A]rt can never give the rules that make an art.”
“Thus are two ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime. And this is not the only instance wherein the opposite extremes operate equally in favor of the sublime, which in all things abhors mediocrity.”
“Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the human mind.”
“I should imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed.”
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Book Keywords:
sublime, excitement, fear, philosophy-literature, passion, ignorance, terror, admiration, horror, human-mind, indifference, pleasure, mental-state
