Porphyry (philosopher) Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Every body is in place; but nothing essentially incorporeal, or any thing of this kind, has any locality.

Porphyry
Not only can logos be seen in absolutely all animals, but in many of them it has the groundwork for being perfected.

Porphyry
Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies.
Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.

Porphyry
I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.

Porphyry
The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.

Porphyry
Incorporeal hypostases, in descending, are distributed into parts, and multiplied about individuals with a diminution of power; but when they ascend by their energies beyond bodies, they become united, and proceed into a simultaneous subsistence, through exuberance of power.

Porphyry
The fleshless diet contributes to health and to a suitable endurance of hard work in philosophy.

Porphyry
So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.

Porphyry
Every good thing is gentle and consistent, progressing in good order and not going beyond what is right.

Porphyry
Animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?

Porphyry