Here's one I saved from a grad school reading assignment:

"When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving 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 cause of this I shall endeavour to investigate hereafter." -- From Edmund Burke's On The Sublime and the Beautiful.

Funny, he never says how he "investigated."