the beauty of their souls the sweetness of their characters shadow of a doubt

Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. 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. Editor’s Note: This chapter contains text from several sections of “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: With An Introductory Discourse Concerning Taste,” which is contained in the first volume of The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke in Twelve Volumes.Ī PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL PART I SECTION VII.

The beauty of their souls the sweetness of their characters shadow of a doubt