Sublime

He had been in the wars for years, and the things he told and the way he told them fired everybody’s patriotism away up high, and set all hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before anybody rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a sublime march through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder, across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and that and the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm and failing strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one remained—he that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song of Songs, the song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings down and his pride of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene of all, we saw his own pathetic death; and our stillness, as we sat with parted lips and breathless, hanging upon this man’s words, gave us a sense of the awful stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter when that last surviving soul had passed.

I opened the supplement, hoping for more pictures of this sublime mongrel Madonna.

every creature hath its home, Every sole man hath days of joy and pain, Whether his labours be sublime or low— The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct: Only the dreamer venoms all his days, Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.

“Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,”131 said he.

Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster.

He thought of the notices posted now above his signature all through the populous places of the planet: “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.” The ritualistic formality of it touched him with a feeling of loneliness.

He knows that it’s sublime.

There was no place for words in his sublime misery.

Some of the men gather about the bar; some wander about, laughing and singing; here and there will be a little group, chanting merrily, and in sublime indifference to the others and to the orchestra as well.

She attends him to hell; describing to him the various scenes of that place, and conducting him to his father Anchises, who instructs him in those sublime mysteries, of the soul of the world, and the transmigration; and shows him that glorious race of heroes, which was to descend from him and his posterity.

Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning man; men, not sufficiently strong and farsighted to allow, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:—such men, with their “equality before God,” have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day.

from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On the day before the play opened, I wrote a tweet which said “I’d love people to see it, it’s better seen than read—plays are like sheet music, meant to be sung & we’ve a cast & crew of pure Beyoncé.” So maybe that’s the answer: that they imagine the Beyoncés of the acting world—emotional and empathetic titans—killing every line with their subtlety and grace (because that’s the reality; our cast are extraordinary)—and staging and movement and costume and lighting and video and sound that are all just sublime.

I would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately.

All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he recollected the prayers his mother had taught him, and discovered a new meaning in every word; for in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

“In the p.m. to Westminster Abbey; but don’t expect me to describe it, that’s impossible—so I’ll only say it was sublime!

'My wife had a saying from her mother: “One must never overdo the sublime.”' Todd's small, troubled frown deepened slightly.

Admirable and terrible trial from which the feeble emerge base, from which the strong emerge sublime.

Ah, now we are rewarded for our sublime faith in a mother’s love.’ So up they flew to their mummy and daddy; and pen cannot describe the happy scene, over which we draw a veil.” That was the story, and they were as pleased with it as the fair narrator herself.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women, Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land, Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings, Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers, Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore, Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children, Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins, Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it, Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases, Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days, Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood, Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content, Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood, Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

for a mighty spell, To wake men’s hearts to dreams of things sublime, Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time.

When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.

On it goes, shouting, roaring, exulting in its strength, passes through a gorge with sublime display of energy, then suddenly expands on a gently inclined pavement, down which it rushes in thin sheets and folds of lacework into a quiet pool—“Emerald Pool,” as it is called—a stopping-place, a period separating two grand sentences.

Their passions are quickly exhausted; but, by the side of a noble and lofty creature that seemingly coarse and rough man seeks a new life, seeks to correct himself, to be better, to become noble and honorable, ‘sublime and beautiful,’ however much the expression has been ridiculed.

to wasting woes a prey, No more in sorrows languish life away: Free as the winds I give thee now to rove: Go, fell the timber of yon lofty grove, And form a raft, and build the rising ship, Sublime to bear thee o'er the gloomy deep.

The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

This was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime.

But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed, To better hopes his more attentive mind Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve replied: “Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought refutes That excellence thought in thee, and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved.

And with regard to what you say, señor, of your son having no great opinion of Spanish poetry, I am inclined to think that he is not quite right there, and for this reason: the great poet Homer did not write in Latin, because he was a Greek, nor did Virgil write in Greek, because he was a Latin; in short, all the ancient poets wrote in the language they imbibed with their mother’s milk, and never went in quest of foreign ones to express their sublime conceptions; and that being so, the usage should in justice extend to all nations, and the German poet should not be undervalued because he writes in his own language, nor the Castilian, nor even the Biscayan, for writing in his.

Aarfy’s joy was sublime.

What are called Metaphysics or Pneumatics were set in opposition to Physics, and were cultivated1394 not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two.