It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
PLOTINUSBeauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.
More Plotinus Quotes
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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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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing.
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The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
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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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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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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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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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It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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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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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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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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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 stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky.
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Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.
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Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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There is one and the same soul in many bodies.
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Knowledge has three degrees–opinion, science, illumination.
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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too.
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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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Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.
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