Longinus
Longinus is the name conventionally given to the author of an influential work of literary criticism, On the Sublime, the author's real name being unknown.
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The images make for confusion rather than forcefulness. Examine each in the light of day and it gradually sinks from the terrible to the ridiculous.
Nothing is truly great which it is great to despise; wealth, honor, reputation, absolute power—anything in short which has a lot of external trappings—can never seem supremely good to the wise man because it is no small good to despise them. People who could have these advantages if they chose but disdain them out of magnanimity are admired much more than those who actually possess them.
There are, one may say, some five most productive sources of the sublime in literature, the common groundwork, as it were, of all five being competence in speaking, without which nothing can be done. The first and most powerful is the power of grand conceptions…and the second is the inspiration of vehement emotion.
To miss a high aim is to fail without shame.
Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind.
Genius needs the curb as often as the spur.
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