'The Sublime and the Beautiful' — Edmund Burke (1756)

Burke's famous essay, the proper title of which is "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," is here in its entirety.

From the essay:

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.... When danger and pain press too nearly, they are incapable of any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.

The essay is free, the way we like it.

Consider just the chapter subheadings:

(above and below),

themselves provocative and worth thinking on.