Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.
-- Joseph Addison
YOU must know, my dear friend, that it is with the sublime as in the common life of man. In life nothing can be considered great which it is held great to despise. For instance, riches, honours, distinctions, sovereignties, and all other things which possess in abundance the external trappings of the stage, will not seem, to a man of sense, to be supreme blessings, since the very contempt of them is reckoned good in no small degree, and in any case those who could have them, but are high-souled enough to disdain them, are more admired than those who have them.
-- Longinus, On the Sublime, tr. W. Rhys Roberts, VII, 1
