“It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Wherever it lies, under earth or over earth, the body will always rot. ”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all good sense.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“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)”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“The purification of the Soul is simply to allow it to be alone; it is pure when it keeps no company.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“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?”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“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.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“The sphere of sense, the Soul in its slumber; for all of the Soul that is in body is asleep and the true getting-up is not bodily but from the body: in any movement that takes the body with it there is no more than passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“(…) la partie irrationnelle de l’âme sera comme un homme qui vit près d’un sage ; il profite de ce voisinage, et ou bien il devient semblable à lui, ou bien il aurait honte d’oser faire ce que l’homme de bien ne veut pas qu’il fasse. Donc pas de conflit ; il suffit que la raison soit là ; la partie inférieure de l’âme la respecte et, si elle est agitée d’un mouvement violent, c’est elle-même qui s’irrite de ne pas rester en repos quand son maître est là, et qui se reproche sa faiblesse.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolties which correspond to their own frivolous nature.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“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.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Thus, with the good we have the bad: we have the opposed movements of a dancer guided by one artistic plan; we recognize in his steps the good as against the bad, and see that in the opposition lies the merit of the design.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men, not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling...we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
Plotinus
Born place: in Lycopolis, Egypt
Born date January 1, 0204
See more on GoodReads
“Even if you know what's coming, you're never prepared for how it feels.”
― Natalie Standiford, quote from How to Say Goodbye in Robot
“Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice ― or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”
― Martin Luther King Jr., quote from Letter from the Birmingham Jail
“His eyes were like black obsidian holes that threatened to suck everything in. Hypnotized, Atsuko couldn’t help being drawn down to his face. “Ah. You poor thing. You poor thing.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika
“As of today, I rebel against death! Work seems frivolous; I'm a proud man, and a lifetime's work would be too brief an agony for me. At the last moment, I'd attack...to the right...to the left...And then—oh!—sweet old soul of mine, eternity would not have been wasted on us!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell
“That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.
It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.
Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith.
Why? The truth is plain:
We were not born to be niggers.”
― David Simon, quote from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
Lone Wolf
The Marvelous Land o...
The Mysteries of Udo...
Shattered Souls
Remember When
Dinner at the Homesi...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
