Plotinus Quotes on God
Plotinus was a 3rd-century philosopher of late antiquity, born in Roman Egypt and active in Rome, where he founded the philosophical school whose teaching is preserved in the Enneads. This page collects quotes attributed to Plotinus on the topic of god, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Plotinus:
“If you do not become equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is known by the like.”
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“Pleasure and distress, fear and courage , desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat? Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending.”
First Tractate : The Animate and the Man, §1 -
“We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate. Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.”
First Tractate : The Animate and the Man, §3 -
“Hence, as Narcissus , by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies , and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated , not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows .”
First Ennead, Book VI, as translated by Thomas Taylor , The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation (1891) pp. 43-44.