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1. from "Of the Sublime" 1793 A Sublime Object With whose conception our nature feels its limits, but our cognitive nature its superiority, its freedom from limits; in the face of which we are therefore physically reduced, but over which we morally elevate ourselves, that is, through ideas. What the Sublime does for us An immensely high tower or mountain can provide a sublime of cognition. If it bends down to us, then it is transformed into a sublime of feeling. However, both again have in common with one another, that through their contradiction with the conditions of our existence and activity they reveal that power in us, which feels itself bound to none of these conditions—a power therefore, which, on the one hand, can conceive more than the senses grasp, and, on the other hand, fears nothing in regard to its independence and suffers no violence in its manifestations, even if its sensuous companion should succumb to the fearful power of nature."
Sublime의 미적 경험은 두 가지 모두 일종의 한계상황에서 발생하는데, 그것을 통해 우리도 모르고 있던 우리의 힘을 드러낸다는 것. 물론 이것을 매개하는 것은 이성이지만, 그 이성이 발휘되는 대상은 자연. Sublime으로 인해 자각하게 되는 힘은 감각이 파악할 수 있는 것보다 더 많이 파악할 수 있는 힘, 그 힘이 (자연으로부터) 독립적으로 작동하는 것에 있어서 어떤 두려움도 없고 그것을 표현하는 것에 있어서 어떠한 폭력(적 제한)도 허용하지 않는 힘. 이것을 정신적 "자유"라고 부르고, 정신의 자율성을 주장할 수 있는 근거가 된다. 워즈워스가 자연의 공포스러운 작용을 접하면서 느끼는 sublime적인 미적 경험이 상상력의 존재를 실감하고, 시적 정신의 성장을 증언할 수 있는 것도 바로 이러한 Sublime의 경험에 근거한 것.
2. from "On the Sublime" 1801
The sublime awakening us to the grandeur within us
But no sooner has free contemplation set him at a distance from the blind assault of natural forces-no sooner does he discover in the flood of appearances something abiding in his own being - then the savage bulk of nature about him begins to speak quite another language to his heart; and the relative grandeur outside him is the mirror in which he perceives the absolute grandeur within himself. Fearlessly and with a terrible delight he now approaches these ghastly visions of his imagination and deliberately deploys the whole force of this faculty in order to represent the sensuously infinite, so that even if it should fail in this attempt he will experience all the more vividly the superiority of his ideas over the highest of which sensuousness is capable.
The Sublime as the last stage of Bildung
The capability of perceiving the sublime is thus one of the most splendid propensities of human nature, which because of its origin in the independent faculties of thought and volition is worthy both of our respect and of the most perfect development because of its influence on man as a moral being. The beautiful is valuable only with reference to the human being, but the sublime with reference to the pure daemon in him; and since it is certainly our vocation, despite all sensuous limitations, to be guided by the statutes of pure spirit, the sublime must complement the beautiful in order to make aesthetic education into a complete whole and to enlarge the perceptive capacity of the human heart to the full extent of our vocation; beyond the world of sense in any case.
 
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