What desire there may be can never be for the vile; even the food and drink necessary for restoration will lie outside the soul’s attention, and not less the sexual appetite; if such desire there must be, it will turn upon the actual needs of nature and be entirely under control. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
I applaud your devotion to philosophy, I rejoice to hear that your spirit has set sail, like the returning Ulysses, for its native land — that glorious, that only real country — the world of unseen truth. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
We are not cast away, not separate. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
The wise man recognizes the idea of the Good within him. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
Truth is the agreement of the mind with itself. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
He who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself, seeks to realize beauty without, by laborious production. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
His aim should be to concentrate and simplify, and so to expand his being… and so to float upwards towards the divine fountain of being whose stream flows within him. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy: their own self-love. Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
When you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this Union, this Identity. Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)
You ask, “How can we know the Infinite?” I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer, in which […]
