Plotinus

“Each one of us is an intelligible world.”

“All things are striving after Contemplation.”

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

“Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.”

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

“This is the life of the gods and of the godlike and blessed among men... a flight of the alone to the Alone.”

“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.”

“Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.”

“We must not run after them, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for its appearance.”

“God is not in a place, but is present to everyone who is able to receive him.”

“The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession, not its very self.”

“To make the world a better place, see the world as a better place.”

“Life here is a rehearsal for the real life.”

“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.”

“Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations of words and in all kinds of music, for melodies and cadences are beautiful.”

“The soul must be trained for the flight, and the methods are various.”

“Every soul is, and becomes, that which it contemplates.”

“The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him.”

“The evil for the soul is to be wholly mingled with the body.”

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