Longinus

"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 bec…"

"Genius needs the curb as often as the spur."

"Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind."

"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."

"To miss a high aim is to fail without shame."

"The other three come partly from art, namely the proper construction of figures – these being of course of two kinds, figures of thought and figures of speech – and, over and above these, nobility of …"

"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. …"

"Utterances which appear inspired are often not sublime but merely childish."