Sublime quotes
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Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me - it was the sublime quality of patience - patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment - which I sadly lacked.
-- Abdus Salam -
Beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern. They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art.
-- Agnes Martin -
He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe
-- Albert Camus -
Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.
-- Albert Einstein -
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So important , indeed, is it (Light), and so much does it pervade with its influence the whole Masonic system, that Freemasonry itself anciently received, among other appellations, that of Lux, or Light, to signify that it is to be regarded as that sublime doctrine of Divine Truth by which the path of him who has attained it is to be illuminated in his pilgrimage of life.
-- Albert Mackey -
There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest.
-- Albert Pike -
Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
-- Alexander Pope -
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Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does "culture" become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith; it cannot produce them.
-- Allan Bloom -
This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.
-- Amy Lowell -
What interests me is the sense of the darkness that we carry within us, the darkness that's akin to one of the principal subjects of the sublime - terror
-- Anish Kapoor -
mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do ...
-- Ann Bridge -
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All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
-- Anna Quindlen -
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects themselves.
-- August Weismann -
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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 -
Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.
-- Barry Lopez -
True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.
-- Bayard Taylor -
In a world of travail and cheap wine the ridiculous becomes sublime
-- Ben Sidran -
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What wonderful things are events! The least are of greater importance than the most sublime and comprehensive speculations.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
The true Way is sublime. It can't be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can't read a word.
-- Bodhidharma -
The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
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 -
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I don't believe the half I hear, Nor the quarter of what I see! But I have one faith, sublime and true, That nothing can shake or slay; Each spring I firmly believe anew All the seed catalogues say!
-- Carolyn Wells -
The dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.
-- Charles Carroll of Carrollton -
A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance!
-- Charles Lamb -
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Year in and year out, under the guise of the Ridiculous, we attempt the Sublime.
-- Charles Ludlam -
When a critic knows what she or he is looking at and writes revealingly about it, it's sublime.
-- Charles Saatchi -
A reader can only embrace the open-armed Dear Everybody .... In Benders unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder. Hold on to this book.
-- Christine Schutt -
Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius, and he who carries that quality to absurdity has reached it; which is always a source of amusement to sensible people.
-- Christoph Martin Wieland -
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By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies, from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe.
-- David Deida -
Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying
-- David Sheff -
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime
-- Derek Mahon -
No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing
-- Derek Parfit -
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Peter Martin’s artistry is nothing short of extraordinary. To sing with him is sublime – to listen to him play is a transcendent experience.
-- Dianne Reeves -
I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?
-- Donna Tartt -
Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling.
-- Dorothy Day -
Whatever our creed, we stand with admiration before the sublime character of Jesus.
-- E. Stanley Jones -
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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 -
Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin -
To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt.
-- Eleanor Catton -
Princeton is a sublime undergraduate university. It has a good architecture school.
-- Emilio Ambasz -
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It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.
-- Emily Carr -
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
-- Eric Hoffer -
Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!
-- Erik Larson -
Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.
-- Eugene Delacroix -
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Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.
-- Francis of Assisi -
Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty.
-- Francis of Assisi -
Dear God, please reveal to us your sublime beauty, that is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, so that we will never again feel frightened.
-- Francis of Assisi -
There is something sublime about its aloofness from and its indifference to its external environment.
-- Frederick Soddy -
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The most sublime truth of all has never been stated or written or sung. Not because it is far away and can not be reached, but because it is so intimately close, closer than anything that can be spoken. It is alive as the stillness in the core of your being, too close to be described, too close to be objectified, too close to be known in the usual way of knowledge. The truth of who you are is yours already. It is already present…
-- Gangaji -
When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.
-- Gary Clark, Jr. -
The human mind may know God, and learn of God, though it has no terms by which to explain Him; it may think of Him as Absolute, as Infinite, as Personal, while it may never in this life be able to fathom the full meaning of these sublime ideas.
-- George C. Lorimer -
There is nothing I know of so sublime as a fact.
-- George Canning -
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What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
-- George Eliot -
The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow.
-- George Eliot -
To forgive a fault in another is more sublime than to be faultless one's self.
-- George Sand -
When a sonnet is mediocre it is bad, for it should be sublime.
-- Giacomo Casanova -
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[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.
-- Gottfried Leibniz -
Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
-- Harold Bloom -
Aunt Jane observed, the second time She tumbled off a bus, 'The step is short from the Sublime To the Ridiculous.
-- Harry Graham -
A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.
-- Haruki Murakami -
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Onward and sublime Will ever glide The silent stream of Time, That bears us on its tide.
-- Harvey Rice -
A sublime faith in human imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray.
-- Havelock Ellis -
To bring the sublime into the mundane is the greatest challenge there is.
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan -
I am not innocent. Innocence is a science of the sublime. And I am only at the very beginning of the apprenticeship.
-- Helene Cixous -
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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 -
Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -
Once she has committed sin, there is nothing left for the Protestant woman, whereas the Catholic Church, hope of forgiveness makes a woman sublime.
-- Honore de Balzac -
We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.
-- Isaac Newton -
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Naturally I drew register a little exaggerated, in order to create something new in the sense of a sublime literature that sings of despair only in order to oppress the reader, and make him desire the good as the remedy.
-- Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont -
Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
-- Jacques Barzun -
Christ , in the parable of the vine dressers, has taught us a sublime lesson of justice, by showing that to the things which are not our own, we can have no just claim.
-- James F. Cooper -
Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.
-- James K. Polk -
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Republic of the West, Enlightened, free, sublime, Unquestionably best Production of our time.
-- James Kenneth Stephen -
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
-- James Russell Lowell -
In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
-- James Russell Lowell -
As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sublime thoughts will give us their light and power.
-- James Vila Blake -
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Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime.
-- Jay DeFeo -
Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex and it commands the higher price.
-- Jean Baudrillard -
The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.
-- Jean de la Bruyere -
Never has good weather felt so bad. Never have flowers inspired so much fear. Never has the warm caress of a sunbeam seemed so ominous. The weather is sublime, it's glorious, it's the end of the world.
-- Joel Achenbach -
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He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater -
In the cross of Christ I glory,Towering o'er the wrecks of time;All the light of sacred storyGathers round its head sublime.
-- John Bowring -
No words will ever describe the exquisite beauty and charm of this mountain park – Nature’s landscape garden at once tenderly beautiful and sublime. No wonder it draws nature-lovers from all over the world.
-- John Muir -
It is not without trepidation that I have appropriated the codes of the Sublime and the Picturesque in my work. After all, serious photographers have spent most of this century trying to expunge such extravagances from their art. The tradition lives on, mostly in calendars and picture postcards. I was challenged to rework and revitalize that which had been so roundly denigrated.
-- John Pfahl -
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Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.
-- John Ruskin -
A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
-- John Ruskin -
The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse.
-- John Wesley Powell -
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
-- Joseph Addison -
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The less there is of you, the more you experience the sublime.
-- Joseph Campbell -
Beauty should be shared for it enhances our joys. To explore its mystery is to venture towards the sublime.
-- Joseph Cornell -
When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
-- Josh Billings -
Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets at night.
-- Joyce Grenfell -
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Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
-- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel -
Chocolate's okay, but I prefer a really intense fruit taste. You know when a peach is absolutely perfect... it's sublime. I'd like to capture that and then use it in a dessert.
-- Kathy Mattea -
I went from everyone saying, "She-can't-act-she-can't-act-she-can't-act," to an Oscar nomination. So there was something quite sublime about that!
-- Keira Knightley -
The relationship we have with God is not the same over a life; sometimes, as with human relationships, it goes through bad patches and sometimes it becomes very intense. It is a terrifying thing to have a relationship with one's creator, to spend one's life so that one is trying to converge with one's creator seems an extraordinarily difficult and sublime thing. But at the same time it's extremely simple. One of the things which perpetually amazes me is that at any moment or any day, anyone who is alive can talk with the creator of the cosmos.
-- Kevin Hart -
