Plotinus
Philosopher
"Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition."
Illumination quotes
Illumination
151 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Karen Hesse
Author
"Sometimes, a flame can be utterly extinguished. Sometimes, a flame can shrink and waver, but sometimes a flame refuses to go out. It flares up from the faintest ember to illuminate the darkness, to burn in spite of overwhelming odds."
Anais Nin
Writer, Diarist
"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic."
Elif Safak
Author
"If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment."
Rene Descartes
Philosopher, Mathematician
"Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness."
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Illumination quotes (page 1 of 8)
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"So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get divine illumination. Forget all the worldly knowledge that thou hast acquired and become as a child, and then will thou get the divine wisdom."
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"It will be celebrated... with pomp and parade... bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other."
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"Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength."
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"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light."
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"Regrets are illuminations come too late."
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"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest."
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"Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science."
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"Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living."
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"But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens."
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"By persistent and sustained practice, anyone and everyone can make the yoga journey and reach the goal of illumination and freedom."
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"A person is disposed to an act of choice by an angel ... in two ways. Sometimes, a man's understanding is enlightened by an angel to know what is good, but it is not instructed as to the reason why ... But sometimes he is instructed by angelic illumination, both that this act is good and as to the reason why it is good."
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"People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light."
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"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."
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"Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands."
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"Now you are on the Buddhist way. Keep up your meditation, as there is no instant illumination. The mind moves slowly into this. Do not become attached to your method. When, in the course of your meditation, your consciousness will have expanded and been transformed, you will then recognize that all the ways are valid ways."
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"If you don't laugh at all, you've missed the point. If you only laugh, you've missed your chance from illumination."
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"The apostles were moved, not so much by an intellectual apprehension, as by a spiritual illumination. They met men, and the need of those men whom they met cried aloud to them."
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"The information was kept hidden for the same reason we keep matches from children. In the correct hands, fire can provide illumination... but in the wrong hands, fire can be highly destructive."
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"What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one."
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"The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."
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