📔 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

[I]f, after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inadvertently to take another step in the manner of the former ones, the shock is extreamly rude and disagreeable; and by no art, can we cause such a shock by the same means, when we expect and prepare for it.

[T]he whole capacity of the eye, vibrating in all its parts must approach near to the nature of what causes pain, and consequently must produce an idea of the sublime. Or if we take it, that one point only of an object is distinguishable at oince; the matter will amount nearly to the same thing, or rather it will make the origin of the sublime from greatness of dimension yet clearer.

To produce therefore a perfect grandeur in such things as we have been mentioning, there should be a perfect simplicity, an absolute uniformity in disposition, shape and colouring.