Porphyry Quotes
Porphyry of Tyre was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and the most important pupil of Plotinus. He edited and arranged his teacher's writings into the Enneads, prefacing them with the Life of Plotinus, our principal source for the founder of Neoplatonism. The quotes below are attributed to Porphyry, organized by topic.
Browse Porphyry by topic
Porphyry on God
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“Soul , indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies. Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.”
5 - 6
Porphyry on Justice
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“Every good thing is gentle and consistent, progressing in good order and not going beyond what is right.”
2, 39, 4 -
“Animals are rational ; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?”
3, 18, 1
Porphyry on Knowledge
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Attributed to Porphyry:
“Empty are the words of that philosopher which heal no human suffering.”
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“Introduction to Aristotle's Organon , as translated by Octavius Freire Owen (1853), p. v”
The utility of a science which enables men to take cognizance of the travellers on the mind 's highway, and excludes those disorderly interlopers, verbal fallacies , needs but small attestation. Its searching penetration by definition alone, before which even mathematical precision fails, would especially commend it to those whom the abstruseness of the study does not terrify, and who recognise th -
“Every body is in place ; but nothing essentially incorporeal, or any thing of this kind, has any locality.”
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“The fleshless diet contributes to health and to a suitable endurance of hard work in philosophy.”
1, 2, 1 -
“Not only can logos be seen in absolutely all animals, but in many of them it has the groundwork for being perfected.”
3, 2, 4 -
“The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.”
3, 20, 7
Porphyry on Mind
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Attributed to Porphyry:
“The soul, when it has departed from the body, returns to its kindred essence.”
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Attributed to Porphyry:
“The body is the cause of the most numerous and most pernicious distractions.”
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“I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.”
2, 22, 1
Porphyry on Politics
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“Incorporeal hypostases , in descending, are distributed into parts, and multiplied about individuals with a diminution of power ; but when they ascend by their energies beyond bodies, they become united, and proceed into a simultaneous subsistence, through exuberance of power.”
11
Porphyry on Truth
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Attributed to Porphyry:
“Let us look at things as they are, not as they appear.”
Porphyry on Virtue
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Attributed to Porphyry:
“We must, therefore, separate ourselves from everything that we ourselves have added.”