100+ Plotinus Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - Plotinus, Thomas Taylor, Synesius Cyrenensis (1817). “Select works ¬of ¬Plotinus, ...: and extracts from the treatise of Synesius On Providence : Translated from the greek ; with an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's life of Plotinus”, p.492

Topics: Ignorant

The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.

Topics: World

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.

source: - Plotinus, Elmer O'Brien (1964). “The Essential Plotinus”, p.42, Hackett Publishing

Topics: Eye, Use, Birthright

Withdraw into yourself and look.

source: - Plotinus, Elmer O'Brien (1964). “The Essential Plotinus”, p.42, Hackett Publishing

Topics: Looks, Sculptors, Introspection, Beautiful Face

Life is the flight of the alone to the alone.

Topics: Flight, Life Is

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; 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.

Topics: Daughter, Father, Fall

Nature is but an image of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know.

Topics: Soul, Lasts

It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.

Topics: Unity, Virtue

Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.

Topics: Knowledge, Mean, Illumination, Dialectics

Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.

Topics: Reality, Men, Voice, Pure Soul

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.

Topics: Views, Vision, Contemplation

We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order...

Topics: Beauty, Order, Ugliness

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.

Topics: Beautiful, Cutting, Finding Yourself

There is one and the same soul in many bodies.

source: - Plotinus, Arthur Hilary Armstrong, Paul Henry, Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (1984). “Plotinus: Enneads IV”, Loeb Classical Library

Topics: Soul, Body

Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot.

Topics: Lying, Body, Earth

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

source: - Plotinus, Arthur Hilary Armstrong (1962). “Plotinus: Selections from His Major Writings”

Topics: Wise, Men, Purpose

The Soul of each one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete.

source: - Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.448, Delphi Classics

Topics: Soul, May, Universe

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.

source: - Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.676, Delphi Classics

Topics: Men, Unity, Looks, Many Faces

The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.

source: - "DVD Review - Bill Moyers: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith" by Sam McPherson, September 19, 2011.

Topics: Inspirational, Beautiful, Soul

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.

Topics: Two, Soul, Desire, Employing

Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.

source: - Plotinus (1952). “The Six Enneads”, p.48, Hayes Barton Press

Topics: Beautiful, Eye, Soul

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?

Topics: Portraiture, Enough, Drag

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.

Topics: Perseverance, Self, Shining

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, 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...

source: - Plotinus (1952). “The Six Enneads”, p.47, Hayes Barton Press

Topics: Cutting, Light, Perfect, Overcast

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.

source: - Plotinus (2005). “The Enneads”, p.153, Penguin UK

Topics: Patience, Running, Eye

Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.

Topics: Identical

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.

Topics: Beautiful, Ignorance, Knowing

It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it.

source: - Plotinus (1917). “The Ethical Treatises: Being the Treatises of the First Ennead with Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, and the Preller-Ritter Extracts Forming a Conspectus of the Plotinian System”

Topics: All Things

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.

source: - "The Ethical Treatises".

Topics: Flight, Life Is

If someone with the right conduct tries to attain to something that lies outside of it, is his goal not the right conduct.

Topics: Right Conduct