Cut 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.
PLOTINUSNever 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.
More Plotinus Quotes
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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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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.
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
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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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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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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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The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.
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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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Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
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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.
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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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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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