Plotinus Quotes

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.

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.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

There is one and the same soul in many bodies.

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

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

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

Become vision itself.

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

The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.

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

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

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.

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.