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Sublimity   Listen
noun
Sublimity  n.  (pl. sublimities)  
1.
The quality or state of being sublime (in any sense of the adjective).
2.
That which is sublime; as, the sublimities of nature.
Synonyms: Grandeur; magnificence. Sublimity, Grandeur. The mental state indicated by these two words is the same, namely, a mingled emotion of astonishment and awe. In speaking of the quality which produces this emotion, we call it grandeur when it springs from what is vast in space, power, etc.; we call it sublimity when it springs from what is elevated far above the ordinary incidents of humanity. An immense plain is grand. The heavens are not only grand, but sublime (as the predominating emotion), from their immense height. Exalted intellect, and especially exalted virtue under severe trials, give us the sense of moral sublimity, as in the case of our Savior in his prayer for his murderers. We do not speak of Satan, when standing by the fiery gulf, with his "unconquerable will and study of revenge," as a sublime object; but there is a melancholy grandeur thrown around him, as of an "archangel ruined."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sublimity" Quotes from Famous Books



... and dignity, began to recite a poem he remembered to have written when he was about twenty years of age,—a poem daringly planned, which when published had aroused the bitterest animosity of the press critics on account of what they called its "forced sublimity." The sublimity was by no means "forced"—it was the spontaneous outcome of a fresh and ardent nature full of enthusiasm and high-soaring aspiration, but the critics cared nothing for this, . . all they saw was a young ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... into her ears an account of the utter uncongeniality between herself and husband, largely because he was wholly unappreciative of her higher thoughts and feelings. As an example she related that when they visited Niagara Falls and her soul was soaring into the seventh heaven of glory, majesty and sublimity, he exclaimed, "What a magnificent water power this would be, if utilized;" and that he did it on purpose to shock her sensibilities. Miss Anthony finally said: "Now, my dear, the trouble is you fail to recognize that your husband is so constituted that he sees the practical ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... vanity which, in the present course of the world, is so frequently concealed—and that the Lord alone is exalted, and that those who now shut their eyes will then be compelled to acknowledge these truths. That Isaiah has this general judgment in view, is too clearly proved by the sublimity of the whole description, by the express mention of the whole earth, e.g., ii. 19, and by not limiting, in the individualized description in ver. 12 sqq., the high and lofty which is to be brought low to Judah alone, but by extending it to the whole world. But in iii. 1 ff. the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... Assistances. As Homer say's, The Horses of the Gods, sprung as far at every Stride, as a Man can see who sit's upon the Sea-shore. But foreign Assistances, as a figurative Turn, &c. may raise a passage to an equal degree of Sublimity, which yet does not so largely dilate the Mind; as this of Shakespear's is more ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... were to blame for his indifference to his achievements in prose, for not even the Westminster Convention, or the divorce topics of Tetrachordon, or yet the liberty of the press, albeit raised to a level of philosophic first principles, were quite up to those fixed stars of sublimity about which it was Milton's pleasure to revolve. Hand and Soul is in faultless harmony with Rossetti's work in verse, because distinguished by the same strength of imagination. That it was written in a single night ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine


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