Date: 1756

"But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another, and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"The tossing of the sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely subsided, all the passion, which the accident raised, subsides along with it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"It is rather the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"It can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguished some few particulars, that belong to the same class, and are consistent with each other, from the immense crowd of different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas, that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"Whatever turns the soul inward upon itself, tends to concenter forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chace is certainly of service"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer s...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"Now the imagination is the most extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impres...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)