“Knowledge has three degrees: opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.”
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Plotinus 15
Neoplatonist philosopher 203–270Related quotes

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 267
Context: Anything is possible. You can be told you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. By fight I mean arm yourself with all the available information, get second opinions, third opinions, and fourth opinions. Understand what has invaded your body, and what the possible cures are. It's another fact of cancer that the more informed and empowered patient has a better chance of long-term survival. What if I had lost? What if I relapsed and the cancer came back? I still believe I would have gained something in the struggle, because in what time I had left I would have been a more complete, compassionate, and intelligent man, and therefore more alive.


As quoted in Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Chapter "Life of Anacharsis", 1702 edition, John Nicholson, p. 55.
Source: [Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes_Laërtius, The Lives of the Ancient Philosophers: Containing an Account of Their Several Fects, Doctrines, Actions and Remarkable Sayings..., http://books.google.com/books?id=SQrULxU3TXMC, 4 September 2013, 1702, John Nicholson, 54, Life of Anarchasis]

Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902; quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972).

The Three Silences of Molinos http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3051/12504/ (1878).

Variants: Aristocracy has three successive ages. First superiorities, then privileges and finally vanities. Having passed from the first, it degenerates in the second and dies in the third.
Aristocracy has three successive ages. First superiority, then privileges and finally vanities. Having passed from the first, it degenerates in the second and dies in the third.
Original version: L'aristocratie a trois âges successifs : l'âge des supériorités, l'âge des privilèges, l'âge des vanités ; sortie du premier, elle dégènère dans le second et s'éteint dans le dernier.
Book I, Ch. 1 : The Vallé-aux-loups
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919

The First Revelation, Chapter 5
Context: In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, — I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my God and me.