Until 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.
PLOTINUSBeing is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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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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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it.
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Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
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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 are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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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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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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In actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.
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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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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. […] Then it was as if One voice sounded.
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Never 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.
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Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
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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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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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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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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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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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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
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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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We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.
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