It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me.
PLOTINUSThe vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.
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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But coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.
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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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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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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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Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls.
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In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view.
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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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Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
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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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Become vision itself.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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In actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.
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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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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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