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.
PLOTINUSWherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.
More Plotinus Quotes
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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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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.
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The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.
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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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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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It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
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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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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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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 means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.
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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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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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Become vision itself.
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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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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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