Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
PLOTINUSEach one of us is part of the soul of the universe
More Plotinus Quotes
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Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.
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When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head.
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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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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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Become vision itself.
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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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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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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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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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Life here with the things of the earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.
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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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A dogma recognized throughout antiquity… (that) the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal regions and… afterwards… passes into new bodies, there to undergo new trials.
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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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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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One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.
PLOTINUS






