Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
PLOTINUSWe 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.
More Plotinus Quotes
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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.
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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.
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In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view.
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The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.
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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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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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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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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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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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Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
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God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.
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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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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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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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One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing.
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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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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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If someone with the right conduct tries to attain to something that lies outside of it, is his goal not the right conduct.
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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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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.
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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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