"After the souls have been freed from generation, according to the ancients they administer the universe together with the gods, while according to the Platonists they contemplate the gods' order. According to the former, in the same way they help the angels with the creation of the universe, while according to the latter they accompany them."

Iamblichus, De Anima 53

"'Heroes' refers also to souls separated from bodies, whose conduct has been good, except that these are located in a lower position than the demons. Pythagoras held the heroes in esteem also, and we honor them by believing them to be eternally existent, and by believing that they requite with evil or good whoever does harm or good to them. For them there are prescribed exaltation, incense and sacrifice on the twenty-fifth day of January."

Proclus(?), Commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses 94b

"Or how else are we to become nearer to the One, if we do not rouse up the One of the soul, which is in us as a kind of image of the One, by virtue of which the most accurate of authorities declare that divine possession most especially comes about? And how are we to make this One and flower of the soul shine forth unless we first of all activate our intellect? For the activity of the intellect leads the soul towards a state and activity of calm. And how are we to achieve perfect intellectual activity if we do not travel there by means of logical conceptions, using composite intellections prior to more simple ones? So then, we need demonstrative power in our preliminary assumptions, where as we need intellectual activity in our investigations of being (for the orders of being are denied of the One), and we need inspired impulse in our consciousness of that which transcends all beings, in order that we may not slip unawares from our negations into Not-Being and its invisibility by reason of our indefinite imagination, but rousing up the One within us and, through this, warming the soul we may connect ourselves to the One itself and, as it were find mooring, taking our stand above everything intelligible within ourselves and dispensing with every other one of our activities, in order that we may consort with it alone and perform a dance around it, leaving behind all the intellections of the soul which are directed to secondary things."

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Parmenides 1071 - 1072

"The moment you find yourself offended by a flaw in someone, you should stop and consider whether you have similar flaws."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.30

"You must hasten toward the light and toward the rays of the Father, from where the soul, clothed in mighty intellect, has been sent to you."

The Chaldean Oracles fr. 115

"Then, at the age of fifty, those who've survived the tests and been successful both in practical matters and in the sciences must be led to the goal and compelled to lift up the radiant light of their souls to what itself provides light for everything. And once they've seen the good itself, they must each in turn put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order, using it as their model. Each of them will spend most of his time with philosophy, but, when his turn comes, he must labor in politics and rule for the city's sake, not as if he were doing something fine, but rather something that has to be done. Then, having educated others like himself to take his place as guardians of the city, he will depart for the Isles of the Blessed and dwell there."

Plato, The Republic 540a

"What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes. 'How does it come, then?' As God wills."

Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.17

"In short, the philosophers began only by so to speak contrary principles; but above these elements they knew another superior one, as is testified by Philolaus, who says that God has produced, and realized the Limited and the Unlimited, and shown that at the Limit is attached the whole series which has a greater affinity with the One, and to the Unlimited, the series that is below."

Archytas the Pythagorean, fragments 2 (quoted from Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library p. 179)

"For all things to produce with ease thro' mind is thine.
Hence mother Earth and mountains swelling high
Proceed from thee, the deep and all within the sky.
Saturnian king, descending from above,
Magnanimous, commanding, sceptred Jove;
All-parent, principle and end of all"

The Orphic Hymns, "To Jupiter" 3-9 (Thomas Taylor translation)

"The third type of property that has come from the intellectual level of being to all things and proceeds all the way to us is the divine names, through which we call upon the gods and by which they are praised. They have been revealed by the gods themselves, cause reversion back to them and, to the extent that there is something luminous in them, lead to human understanding. ... Different peoples partake of these names in different ways: the Egyptians, for instance, have taken such names from the gods in accordance with their native tongue, but the Chaldaeans and Indians have taken their own differently in accordance with their own languages, and in the same way the Greeks have taken theirs in accordance with their own idiom. Thus, even if the Greeks, with divine guidance, call a certain God ‘Briareos’ while the Chaldaeans call him something else, we must suppose that both names are products of the gods and indicate the [same] essence."

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Cratylus 32.1-10

"Maker of earth and sky, from age to age
Who rul’st the world by reason; at whose word
Time issues from Eternity’s abyss:
To all that moves the source of movement, fixed
Thyself and moveless. Thee no cause impelled
Extrinsic this proportioned frame to shape
From shapeless matter; but, deep-set within
Thy inmost being, the form of perfect good,
From envy free; and Thou didst mould the whole
To that supernal pattern. Beauteous
The world in Thee thus imaged, being Thyself
Most beautiful. So Thou the work didst fashion
In that fair likeness, bidding it put on
Perfection through the exquisite perfectness
Of every part’s contrivance. Thou dost bind
The elements in balanced harmony,
So that the hot and cold, the moist and dry,
Contend not; nor the pure fire leaping up
Escape, or weight of waters whelm the earth.
Thou joinest and diffusest through the whole,
Linking accordantly its several parts,
A soul of threefold nature, moving all.
This, cleft in twain, and in two circles gathered,
Speeds in a path that on itself returns,
Encompassing mind’s limits, and conforms
The heavens to her true semblance. Lesser souls
And lesser lives by a like ordinance
Thou sendest forth, each to its starry car
Affixing, and dost strew them far and wide
O’er earth and heaven. These by a law benign
Thou biddest turn again, and render back
To thee their fires. Oh, grant, almighty Father,
Grant us on reason’s wing to soar aloft
To heaven’s exalted height; grant us to see
The fount of good; grant us, the true light found,
To fix our steadfast eyes in vision clear
On Thee. Disperse the heavy mists of earth,
And shine in Thine own splendour. For Thou art
The true serenity and perfect rest
Of every pious soul—to see Thy face,
The end and the beginning—One the guide,
The traveller, the pathway, and the goal."

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy Book III, Chapter XIV "Hymn to the Father of All Things"

"[Pythagoras] cultivated philosophy, the scope of which is to free the mind implanted within us from the impediments and fetters within which it is confined, without whose freedom none can learn anything sound or true, or perceive the unsoundness in the operation of sense. ... The purified mind should be applied to the discovery of beneficial things, which can be effected by certain arts, which by degrees induce it to the contemplation of eternal and incorporeal things which never vary. ... That is the reason he made so much use of the mathematical disciplines and speculations, which are intermediate between the physical and the incorporeal realm, for the reason that, like bodies, they have a three-fold dimension, and yet share the impassibility of incorporeals. [These disciplines he used] as degrees of preparation to the contemplation of the really existent things, by an artistic principle diverting the eyes of the mind from corporeal things, whose manner and state never remain in the same condition, to a desire for true [spiritual] food."

Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 46-47

The ancients took the sun and Apollo to be the same God; and those who understand the beauty and wisdom of analogy or proportion do tell us, that as the body is to the soul, the sight to the mind, and light to truth, so is the sun with reference to Apollo; affirming the sun to be the offspring proceeding perpetually from Apollo, who is eternal and who continually bringeth him forth

Plutarch, Moralia

Plotinus on why the soul is not material:
"For fire and air and water and earth are in themselves soulless; in the case of any one of these to which soul is present, this enjoys a borrowed life, and there are no other bodies apart from these. And those who take the view that there are other elements in addition to these [i.e., the atomists] have asserted that those are bodies, not souls, and so not possessing life. But if, when none of them possesses life, the conjunction of them creates life, that is an absurdity; whereas if each of them were to have life, even one would be sufficient. But it is quite impossible for a composition of bodies to generate life, and for things devoid of thinking to generate intellect. Moreover, they [i.e., the Stoics] are not also going to claim that these bodies are mixed together in any random way. So, therefore, there should be something that orders them and constitutes the cause of their mixture so that this could assume the role of soul."

Plotinus, Enneads 4.7.2

"For there exists a certain Intelligible which you must perceive by the flower of the mind. For if you should incline your mind toward it and perceive it as perceiving a specific thing, you would not perceive it. For it is the power of strength, visible all around, flashing with intellectual divisions. Therefore, you must not perceive that Intelligible violently but with the flame of mind completely extended which measures all things, except that Intelligible. You must not perceive it intently, but keeping the pure eye of your soul turned away, you should extend an empty mind toward the Intelligible in order to comprehend it, since it exists outside of (your) mind."

The Chaldean Oracles fr. 1

On how and why to study Aristotle:
"But since we do not order and beautify our characters in the manner of irrational animals and in a vulgar way, but through syllogistic argumentation and demonstrative proof, it is right that logic should come before ethics, natural science, mathematics, and theology. ... Now it is plainly apparent that the useful knowledge that can be derived from [the philosophy of Aristotle] is that there is a single first principle of everything, infinite in power, unlimited, incorporeal, uncircumscribed, naturally desired by everything, the good itself. ... Now we say that there are five disciplines that lead us towards the summit of philosophy, namely logic, physics, ethics, mathematics, and theology. Logic is the starting-point, and after it comes ethics, after ethics physics, after physics mathematics, and after mathematics theology. And this is reasonable, since what is completely material must come before what is material in some respects and immaterial in others. After this we must proceed to what is completely immaterial, following the ordinance of the blessed Plotinus, which states the young should be instructed in mathematics so as to become accustomed to incorporeal nature."

Olympiodorus, Introduction to Logic 1.9

Reproduction between men and women is a divine thing and a sort of quasi-immortality:
"All of us are pregnant, Socrates, in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. That's because when a man and woman come together in order to give birth, this is a godly affair. Pregnancy, reproduction — this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it cannot occur in anything that is out of harmony, but ugliness is out of harmony with all that is godly. Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. Therefore the goddess who presides at childbirth — she's called Moira or Eilithuia — is really Beauty."

Plato, Symposium 206cd

"Given below are the seven stones which people must have as phylacteries (‘protective amulets’) for the sake of healing. For they are salutary and powerful.

The first is the stone called chrysolith, belonging to Leo (and the Sun).
The second is the stone called aphroselēnos (selenite), belonging to Cancer (and the Moon).
The third is the stone called hematite, belonging to Aries (and Mars).
The fourth is the stone called keraunios (heliotrope?), belonging to Sagittarius (and Jupiter).
The fifth is the stone called mēdos (identification unclear), belonging to Taurus (and Venus).
The sixth is the stone called arabicus (identification unclear), belonging to Virgo (and Mercury).
The seventh is the stone called ostracitis (hornfels?), belonging to Capricorn (and Saturn).

You must seek these so that, through the whole time of your life, you may be under divine protection and so you will forever be healthy and safe."

On Stones, Their Kinds and Their Engravings

On why there must be many gods:
"Now that the One is God follows from its identity with the Good ... the Good being the 'whence' and the 'whither' of all things. Thus if a plurality of gods exist they must have the character of unity. But it is evident that such a plurality in fact exists, inasmuch as every originative cause introduces its proper manifold, which resembles it and is akin to it."

Proclus, Elements of Theology 113

"A God, then, is simple and true in word and deed. He doesn't change himself or deceive others by images, words, or signs, whether in visions or in dreams."

Plato, Republic 382e