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.
PLOTINUSNever 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.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
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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.
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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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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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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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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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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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Become vision itself.
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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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.
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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.
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