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.
PLOTINUS
PLOTINUS
More Plotinus quotes
Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
PlotinusPlotinus It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
PlotinusPlotinus Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
PlotinusPlotinus We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it.
PlotinusPlotinus We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
PlotinusPlotinus Now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.
PlotinusPlotinus Withdraw into yourself and look.
PlotinusPlotinus Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
PlotinusPlotinus Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
PlotinusPlotinus 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.
PlotinusPlotinus 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.
PlotinusPlotinus 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.
PlotinusPlotinus We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.
PlotinusPlotinus 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.
PlotinusPlotinus The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
PlotinusPlotinus As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.
PlotinusPlotinus