Sublime quotes
278 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside sublime — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"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."
"In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of."
"And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks"
"There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous."
"Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!"
"Divine love is the sublime boss of the universe."
"The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural."
"He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime."
"Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."
"Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime."
"Rest not Life is sweeping by go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."
"There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance."
"What wonderful things are events! The least are of greater importance than the most sublime and comprehensive speculations."
"But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand."
"People talk about Frank Sinatra all the time - and they should talk about Frank - but he had the greatest arrangers. They worked for him in a different kind of way than they worked for other people. They gave him arrangements that are just sublime on every level. And he, of course, could match that because he had this ability to get inside of the song in a sort of a conversational way. Frank sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards."
"To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme."
"The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain, just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes."
"The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime."
"Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic."
"The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault."
