“You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.”

Bk. 4, ch. 3
Corinne (1807)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite." by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël?
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël 42
Swiss author 1766–1817

Related quotes

Rem Koolhaas photo
Girard Desargues photo

“When no point of a line is at a finite distance, the line itself is at an infinite distance.”

Girard Desargues (1591–1661) French mathematician and engineer

Brouillion project (1639) as quoted by Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, Projective Geometry (1987)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“Maugham was a mere visitor and did not have to take any language examinations; a civil servant like myself was forced to reach degree level in Malay….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Joseph Silk photo

“The Infinite has to be a relative concept. Go any distance: an infinite space means that there is more to be explored.”

Joseph Silk (1942) British-American astronomer

The Infinite Cosmos, Page 1

Alice Hoffman photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“The infinitely smallest part of space is always a space, something endowed with continuity, not at all a mere point or the boundary between specified places in space.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen (1795) GA I.3, as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Hermann Weyl" http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0409596 (2004).

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Ibid., p. 44.
1880s

Girard Desargues photo

“Parallel lines have a common end point at an infinite distance.”

Girard Desargues (1591–1661) French mathematician and engineer

Brouillion project (1639) as quoted by Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, Projective Geometry (1987)

Related topics