Sublime

[“What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the appetite.—“Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.]

The action of authority is indeed thus rendered less irresistible and less perilous, but it is not totally suppressed.

In himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum.

Tolstoï, Léon. La Sonate à Kreutzer, Paris : Folio, 1974.

Saint Bernard, who vehemently opposed him, said, “He neither eats nor drinks, but only, like the Devil, hungers and thirsts for the blood of souls.”

high and generous characters are now to be met with, whose opinions are at variance with their inclinations, and who praise that servility which they have themselves never known.

However, even if Rousseau disagreed with Hume and Mandeville, he did not seek to deny the basic premise behind their analyses: it truly appeared to be a choice between decadent consumption and wealth on the one hand, and virtuous restraint and poverty on the other. It was simply that Rousseau – unusually – preferred virtue to wealth.

that element of the outrageous which is the mother of all adventures sprang up ungovernable,