Plotinus Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Stars, Sky, Together

  97 Copy quote

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

  Plotinus

  Knowledge, Mean, Illumination

  83 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Beautiful, Cutting, Finding Yourself

  82 Copy quote

• Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

  Plotinus

  Beast, Midway, Mankind

  82 Copy quote

• Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe

  Plotinus

  Soul, Universe

  58 Copy quote

• You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.

  Plotinus

  Faith, Wisdom, Infinite

  63 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Patience, Running, Eye

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

  67 Copy quote

• Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.

  Plotinus

  Beautiful, Ignorance, Knowledge

  64 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Eye, Use, Birthright

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

  52 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Beautiful, Eye, Soul

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

  53 Copy quote

• Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.

  Plotinus

  Doe, Action, Determine

  Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.31, Delphi Classics

  57 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Cutting, Light, Perfect

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

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Flight, Life Is

  "The Ethical Treatises".

  60 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Views, Vision, Contemplation

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Beauty, Beautiful, Character

  Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.60, Delphi Classics

  57 Copy quote

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

  Plotinus

  All Things

  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”

  45 Copy quote

• We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.

  Plotinus

  Spirit

  48 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Reality, Men, Voice

  53 Copy quote

• Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself.

  Plotinus

  Beauty, Light, Play

  90 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Perseverance, Self, Shining

  31 Copy quote

• Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.

  Plotinus

  Fear, Soul, Fear Nothing

  27 Copy quote

• 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.

  Plotinus

  Men, Unity, Inward

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

  7 Copy quote

• Withdraw into yourself and look.

  Plotinus

  Looks, Introspection

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

  37 Copy quote

• I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.

  Plotinus

  Giving, Giving Back, Strive

  Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.2645, Delphi Classics

  23 Copy quote

• God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.

  Plotinus

  God, Ignorant, All Things

  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

  12 Copy quote

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