Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
PLOTINUSThere is one and the same soul in many bodies.
More Plotinus Quotes
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Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.
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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing.
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But coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.
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We may treat of the Soul as in the body – whether it be set above it or actually within it – since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.Now from this relation.
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In actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.
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From the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body’s experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.
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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me.
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Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending.
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Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
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Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.
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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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