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But how are you to see into a virtuous Soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, … - Plotinus
" "But how are you to see into a virtuous Soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: 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.
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About Plotinus
Plotinus [Πλωτῖνος] (c. 204/205–270) was a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neoplatonism (along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas). His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Πλωτῖνος
Alternative Names:
Plotinos
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For the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of
life: and each of us is an Intellectual Kosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest
in us, but, by what is the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective we
are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the Intellectual we are fet-
tered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that
lower, or, rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself
diminished.
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