“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 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“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.”
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“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.”
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
― 1984
― 1984
“For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever”
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
― A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Lopez’s 2025 Year in Books
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