sublime to the ridiculous is only a step, from the

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sublime to the ridiculous is only a step, from the proverbial saying, late 19th century; in The Age of Reason (1795) the political theorist Thomas Paine had said, ‘One step above the sublime, makes the ridiculous; and one step about the ridiculous, makes the sublime again.’ A remark attributed to Napoleon I, on the retreat from Moscow in 1812, is ‘There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous’.

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