Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
PLOTINUSCut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.
More Plotinus Quotes
-
-
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.
PLOTINUS -
The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
PLOTINUS -
One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.
PLOTINUS -
One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing.
PLOTINUS -
Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
PLOTINUS -
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.
PLOTINUS -
Now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.
PLOTINUS -
There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
PLOTINUS -
If someone with the right conduct tries to attain to something that lies outside of it, is his goal not the right conduct.
PLOTINUS -
The sculptor cuts away here, smoothes there, makes this line lighter, this other purer, until he or she has shown a beautiful face upon the statue.
PLOTINUS -
We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.
PLOTINUS -
In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view.
PLOTINUS -
Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
PLOTINUS -
Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
PLOTINUS -
You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
PLOTINUS -
Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
PLOTINUS -
The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.
PLOTINUS -
I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
PLOTINUS -
The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.
PLOTINUS -
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.
PLOTINUS -
We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
PLOTINUS -
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.
PLOTINUS -
All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
PLOTINUS -
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful.
PLOTINUS -
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.
PLOTINUS -
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.
PLOTINUS