Nature is but an image of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know.
PLOTINUSAs the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight.
More Plotinus Quotes
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We may treat of the Soul as in the body – whether it be set above it or actually within it – since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.Now from this relation.
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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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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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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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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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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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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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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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Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
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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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It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me.
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