Plotinus Quotes
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Become vision itself.
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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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All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.
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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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Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
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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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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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I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
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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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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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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 are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
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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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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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God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.
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Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
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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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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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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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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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It is bad enough to be condemned to drag around this image in which nature has imprisoned me. Why should I consent to the perpetuation of the image of this image?
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Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
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Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.