As the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight.
PLOTINUSPleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
More Plotinus Quotes
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If someone with the right conduct tries to attain to something that lies outside of it, is his goal not the right conduct.
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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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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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Life here with the things of the earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing.
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We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing…a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.
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Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
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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.
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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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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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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.
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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.
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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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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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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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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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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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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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The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
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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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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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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?
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Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful.
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