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.
PLOTINUSBeing is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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Withdraw into yourself and look.
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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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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.
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Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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Become vision itself.
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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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Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.
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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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We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.
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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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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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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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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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