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The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. Everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself.

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More quotes by Plotinus

Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?

The First Ennead (250)

Let us, therefore, re-ascend to the good itself, which every soul desires; and in which it can alone find perfect repose.

All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.

The First Ennead (250)

It is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful.

What, then, must be the condition of that being, who beholds the beautiful itself?

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Plotinus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.