Great Throughts Treasury

"All that is eternal is whole at once."

"Is not time the image of Eternity because it effects the perfecting of earthly natures just as Eternity is the container and preserver of being?... Things which proceed from Eternity are not able to share in a stable perfection, whole and unchanging, are under the dominion of time."

"This therefore is Mathematics: She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; She gives life to her own discoveries; She awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; She brings light to our intrinsic ideas; She abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth."

"Wherever there is number, there is beauty. "

"According to most accounts, geometry was first discovered among the Egyptians, taking its origin from the measurement of areas. For they found it necessary by reason of the flooding of the Nile, which wiped out everybody's proper boundaries. Nor is there anything surprising in that the discovery both of this and of the other sciences should have had its origin in a practical need, since everything which is in process of becoming progresses from the imperfect to the perfect. "

"The Pythagoreans considered all mathematical science to be divided into four parts: one half they marked off as concerned with quantity, the other half with magnitude; and each of these they posited as twofold. A quantity can be considered in regard to its character by itself or in relation to another quantity, magnitudes as either stationary or in motion. Arithmetic, then, studies quantity as such, music the relations between quantities, geometry magnitude at rest, spherics magnitude inherently moving."

"It is well known that the man who first made public the theory of irrationals perished in a shipwreck in order that the inexpressible and unimaginable should ever remain veiled. And so the guilty man, who fortuitously touched on and revealed this aspect of living things, was taken to the place where he began and there is for ever beaten by the waves. "

"Let us, therefore, say farewell to those things to which we are attached and consider the strength of virtue and the fact that fate cannot do anything to us, but only to the things around us. For also the accidents that, as you mentioned, recently came over us from outside, have only deprived us of walls and stones, my friend, and have reduced wooden beams to ashes, all of which are mortal and inflammable things, and have ruined our wealth: these are external things and for this reason may fall sometimes under the power of others. But no one is so powerful as to be able to take away something of what depends on us, even if he had all human power. For if we are self-controlled, we shall remain so when all these possessions have departed, and if we love contemplation of beings, we shall not be deprived of this disposition either. And when those most terrible losses that you mention have occurred, we for our part will go on praising the rulers of all things and investigating the causes of events."

"Although these problems have been discussed and examined a thousand times, my soul still wants to talk and hear about them, and return to herself, and wishes as it were to discuss with herself and not only receive arguments about them from the outside."

"But when thou dost behold the very sacred Fire with dancing radiance flashing formless through the depths of the whole world, then hearken to the Voice of Fire."

"For in contemplation and the art of perfectioning, that which makes the Way Above safe and free from stumbling blocks for us, is orderly progress. At any rate, as the Oracles say: Never so much is God estranged from man, and, with Living Power, sends him on fruitless quests."

"For though we [the Gods] are incorporeal: bodies are allowed to our self-revealed manifestations for your sakes."

"Everything is overflowing with Gods."

"In the discovery of lemmas the best aid is a mental aptitude for it. For we may see many who are quick at solutions and yet do not work by method ; thus Cratistus in our time was able to obtain the required result from first principles, and those the fewest possible, but it was his natural gift which helped him to the discovery."

"If thou should'st oft address Me, thou shalt behold all things grow dark, for at that hour no Heaven's curved dome is seen; there shine no Stars; Moon?s light is veiled, Earth is no longer firm; with Lightning flash all is a-flame."

"Surely, the gods' judgment is certain. But as for us, we must be satisfied to 'come close' to those things, for we are men, who speak according to what is likely, and whose lectures resemble fables."

"The Gods admonish us not to look upon them before we are fenced round with the powers brought to birth by the Mystery-rites:"

"The Gods [i.e., presumably the Oracles] warn us to have understanding of ?the form of light that they display.?"

"Thou should'st not look on them before the body is perfected; [for] ever do they fascinate men's souls and draw them from the Mysteries."

"The things that have no shape, take shape."

"The tradition of these [visions] is handed on by the mystagogy of the tradition of the Gods; for it says: When thou hast uttered these [? words of power], thou shalt behold either a fire [? flame] resembling a boy, dancing upon the surface of the waves of air [? ‘ther]; or even a flame that hath no shape, from which a voice proceeds; or [yet] a wealth of light around the area [of sight], strident, a-whirl. Nay, thou shalt see a horse as well, all made of fire, a-flash with light; or yet again a boy, on a swift horse's back astride - a boy clad all in flame, or all bedecked with gold, or else with nothing on; or even shooting with a bow, and standing on horse-back."