Quotes by Plotinus

“The purification of the Soul is simply to allow it to be alone; it is pure when it keeps no company.””

“It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.””

“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.””

“The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.””

“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.””

“Self-knowledge reveals to the soul that its natural motion is not, if uninterrupted, in a straight line, but circular, as around some inner object, about a center, the point to which it owes its origin.””

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

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

“To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all good sense.””

“He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone, is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy is a God among men.””

“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.””