Plotinus

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

Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.

True satisfaction is only for what has its plentitude in its own being; where craving is due to an inborn deficiency, there may be satisfaction at some given moment but it does not last.

Los unos están desarmados y los otros, como van armados, vencen. Entonces, Dios no tenía por qué pelear en persona en favor de los no aguerridos, pues la ley manda que hay que salir salvos de las guerras luchando varonilmente, y no rezando. Porque tampoco se recogen cosechas rezando, sino cultivando la tierra, ni se está sano descuidando la salud. Los malos gobiernan por la cobardía de los gobernados, pues eso es lo justo, y no lo contrario.

The proof of the mightiest power is to be able to use the ignoble nobly, and given formlessness, to make it the material of unknown forms.

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.

Knowledge has three degrees — opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second dialectic; of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known.

The First, then, should be compared to light, the next [Spirit or Intellect] to the sun, and the third [soul] to the celestial body of the moon, which gets its light from the sun. (V-6-4)

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

A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?

To see the supreme which is also the means to the vision; for that which illuminates the Soul is that which is to see.

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

Those who believe that the world of being is governed by luck or chance and that it depends upon material causes are far removed from the divine and from the notion of the One.

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

Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.