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.
PLOTINUSEverything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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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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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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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.
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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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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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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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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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It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me.
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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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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.
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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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