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.
PLOTINUSAnd 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.
More Plotinus Quotes
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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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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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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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In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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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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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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Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.
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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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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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The vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.
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Become vision itself.
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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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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me.
PLOTINUS