Tagged: Burke

Analects of the Core: Burke on delight in the misfortune of others

I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the affection be what it will in appearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if on the contrary it induces us to approach them, if it makes us […]

Analects of the Core: Burke on reality, and pleasure in tragedy

It is a common observation, that objects which in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. – Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, (“Sympathy”)

Analects of the Core: Burke on engrossing ideas

When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which would confine it. – Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, (“Of the Passions Which Belong to Society”)

Analects of the Core: Burke on the sublimity of pain

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 […]