from the sublime to the ridiculous

Idioms  

1. From the beautiful to the silly, from great to puny. For example, They played first Bach and then an ad jingle—from the sublime to the ridiculous. The reverse, from the ridiculous to the sublime, is used with the opposite meaning. Coined by Tom Paine in The Age of Reason (1794), in which he said the two are so closely related that it is but one step from one to the other, the phrase has been often repeated in either order.

---

Example Sentences

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, in the 1st century A.D. the poet Gaius Petronius Arbiter poked fun at the excesses of Roman society in a fictional work called “Satyricon.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 30, 2016

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s same-sex-marriage decision, last summer, these skirmishes may give the sense of moving the L.G.B.T.-equality debate from the sublime to the ridiculous.

From The New Yorker • Jan. 25, 2016

Not from the sublime to the ridiculous, perhaps, but sublimely ridiculous, and surely appealing to all brows, no matter their altitude.

From Washington Post • Dec. 15, 2014

Triple Masters winner Phil Mickelson veered from the sublime to the ridiculous as he ballooned to a 76, matching his previous worst opening round at the championship in 1997 and 2007.

From Reuters • Apr. 11, 2014

Only not sublimely blurred as in Spinoza's, but specifically colored and infinitely interrelated, so that he might pass from the sublime to the ridiculous with an equal sense of its value in the cosmic scheme.

From Dreamers of the Ghetto by Zangwill, Israel