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Plotinus – The Enneads

What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of souls.

When you see that you yourselves are beautiful within, what do you feel?  What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your soul, this longing to break away from the body and live sunken within the veritable self?

These are no other than the emotions of souls under the spell of love.

But what is it that awakens all this passion?  No shape, no colour, no grandeur of mass; all is for a soul, something whose beauty rests upon no colour, for the moral wisdom the soul enshrines and all the other hueless splendour of the virtues.  It is that you find in yourself, or admire in another, loftiness of spirit; righteousness of life; disciplined purity; courage of the majestic face; gravity, modesty that goes fearless and tranquil and passionless; and shining down upon all, the light of godlike Intellection.