Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
PLOTINUSKnowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing.
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The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
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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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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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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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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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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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The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.
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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.
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Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.
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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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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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A dogma recognized throughout antiquity… (that) the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal regions and… afterwards… passes into new bodies, there to undergo new trials.
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If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.
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Become vision itself.
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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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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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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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