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.
PLOTINUSBeauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.
More Plotinus Quotes
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And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone.
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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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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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The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father.
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The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
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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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We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for 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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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.
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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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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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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending.
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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.
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The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.
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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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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.
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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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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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Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe
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