SELECTED MAXIMS
The reader may be interested in a few maxims selected from Plotinos' works which may be of general interest.
1. We develop toward ecstasy by simplification of Soul.
2. We rise by the flight of the Single to the Single, face to face.
3. We contain something of the Supreme.
4. The Soul becomes what she remembers and sees.
5. Everything has a secret power.
6. The best men are those who have most intimacy with themselves.
7. The touch of the good man is the greatest thing in the world.
8. Every being is its best, not when great or numerous, but when it belongs to itself.
9. There are two men in us, the better and the worse.
10. The secret of life is to live simultaneously with others and yourself.
11. God is the author of liberty.
12. Concerning what would it be most worth while to speak, except the Soul? Let us therefore know ourselves.
13. Without virtue, God is but a name.
14. The object of virtue is to separate the soul from the body.
15. We can never become perfect, because he who thinks himself so has already forgotten the supreme divinity towards which he must hasten.
16. The world was created by a concurrence of intelligence and necessity.
17. The Soul is the image, word, and interpreter of the One.
18. The divinities though present to many human beings often reveal themselves only to some one person, because he alone is able to contemplate them.
19. To act without suffering is the sign of a great power.
20. Only virtue is independent.
21. We are beautiful when we know ourselves.
22. The Soul is the child of the universal Father.
23. True happiness is being wise, and exercising this within oneself.
24. To become again what one was originally is to live in the Superior world.
25. The desired goal is not to cease failing, but to grow divine.
26. Virtue demands preliminary purification.
27. Our effort at assimilation should be directed not at mere respectability, but at the gods themselves.
28. One should study mathematics in order to accustom oneself to think of incorporeal things, and to believe in their existence.
29. Soul is not in body, but body in Soul.
30. The Soul's higher part remains in heaven.
31. We should not leave the earth, but not be of it.
32. The object of life is not to avoid evil, or copy the good, but to become good.
33. Dying, to Eustochius: "I am awaiting you, in order to draw the divine in me to the divine in all."