Plotinus Quotes
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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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Become vision itself.
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In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical.
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The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. 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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Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. 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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Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?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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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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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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All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
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All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.
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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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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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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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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. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.
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The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
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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; 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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We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it, 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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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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You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.