Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightening flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation, the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like-these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison to their might. But the sight of them is more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that are in security; and we willingly call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above the accustomed height and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.
Sublimity....does not sublime in anything of nature, but only in our mind insofar as we can become conscious that we are superior to nature within, and therefore also nature without us (insofar as it influences us). everything that excites this feeling in us e.g. the might of nature which calls fourth our forces, is called then (although improperly) sublime. only by supposing this idea in ourselves and in reference to it are we capable of attaining the idea of sublimity that Being which produce respect in us, not merely by the might that it displays in nature, but rather by means of that faculty which resides in us judging it fearlessly and of regarding our destination as sublime in respect of it
-Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment
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