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.
PLOTINUSUntil there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
More Plotinus Quotes
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The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
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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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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
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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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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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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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We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing…a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.
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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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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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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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Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
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Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
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It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
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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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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