Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.
PLOTINUSAs the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight.
More Plotinus Quotes
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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father.
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When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head.
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We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.
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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
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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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Life here with the things of the earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.
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Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.
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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone.
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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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As the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight.
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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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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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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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Nature is but an image of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know.
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The vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.
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In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view.
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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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As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.
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Now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.
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