Quotes about sage (245 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 156

For Men , Pain , Fear , Idea

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá'u'lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: You Can Change the World (2003), p. 86.

People , Feeling , History , Nature

“We must all comprehend the importance of unity, the true significance of canons of propriety and the value of having the freedom to voice different viewpoints which, indeed, are the hallmarks of any pluralistic society. As our sages of yore said, our aims are common, our endeavours common, and there are diverse ways to reach our goals.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

Way , Freedom

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love , Life , Feeling , Mountain

“The master made it his task to systematically destroy every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying: "When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 132

Love , Quotes

“To ordain conscience for Heaven and Earth, to secure life and fortune for the people, to continue the lost teachings of past sages, and to establish peace for all future generations.”

Zhang Zai (1020–1077) Chinese philosopher

Complete Works of Master Zhang, "Supplements to Reflections on Things at Hand", as quoted in Wang Chunyong's Famous Chinese Sayings Quoted by Wen Jiabao, trans. Chan Sin-wai (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Co., 2009), p. 10

Life , People , Peace , Past

“The Master in these tales is not a single person. He is a Hindu Guru, a Zen Roshi, a Taoist Sage, a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Monk, a Sufi Mystic. He is Lao-tzu and Socrates; Buddha and Jesus; Zarathustra and Mohammed.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Introduction
One Minute Nonsense (1992)
Context: The Master in these tales is not a single person. He is a Hindu Guru, a Zen Roshi, a Taoist Sage, a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Monk, a Sufi Mystic. He is Lao-tzu and Socrates; Buddha and Jesus; Zarathustra and Mohammed. His teaching is found in the seventh century B. C. and the twentieth century A. D. His wisdom belongs to East and West alike. Do his historical antecedents really matter? History, after all, is the record of appearances, not Reality; of doctrines, not of Silence.

Personality

“To my enemies I appear like a madman, to my admirers like a sage and to those who do not know me, I simply appear like a stranger in front of their senses.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Appearance , Sense

“You’re killing me here, Sage!”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly my point.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

In reference to an excerpt - "by his non-action, the sage governs all" - from Lao Tze's Tao Te Ching.
Abide as the Self

“This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth’s philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

Hymn: The Burial of Moses http://www.bethanyipc.org.sg/poems/bulletin080113.htm

Men , Truth

“Therefore the Sage embraces the One,
And becomes the model of the world.
He does not reveal himself,
And is therefore luminous.
He does not justify himself,
And is therefore far-famed.
He does not boast himself,
And therefore people give him credit.
He does not pride himself,
And is therefore the ruler among men.
It is because he does not contend
That no one in the world can contend against him.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 22, as translated by Lin Yutang (1948)

Men , People , World

“Again: If one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Money , Peace

“How the Ganges water reaches the various planets from the top of the universe is explained herein. Celestial airplanes carry the water from the planets of the sages to other planets. So-called advanced scientists of the modern age are trying to go to the higher planets, but at the same time they are experiencing a power shortage on earth. If they were actually capable scientists, they could personally go by airplane to other planets, but this they are unable to do. Having now given up their Moon excursions, they are attempting to go to other planets, but without success.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 5, Chapter 17, verse 4, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/5/17/4
Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Age , Universe , Water , Time

“I can now say: All the sages of Israel are in my estimation like a garlic peel.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

Attributed

“[The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection … If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Truth , Imagination , Idea , Perfection

“In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The “sage” of antiquity does not have the same firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 92

Love , Fear

“You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

Dreams , Night

“It would be necessary that they should be already sages to love wisdom: a truth that was felt at once by him to whom philosophy owes its name.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 8; Variant: They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)
Context: They have founded the whole structure of their happiness on these very illusions, which ought to be combated and dissipated by the light of knowledge, and they would think they were paying too dearly for a truth which begins by robbing them of all that has value in their sight. It would be necessary that they should be already sages to love wisdom: a truth that was felt at once by him to whom philosophy owes its name.

Love , Wisdom , Truth

“It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Chapter three, p. 53

War , Secret , Problem , Life

“Can you come over to Amberwood? I need you to help me break curfew and escape my dorm.”
There were a few moments of silence. “Sage, I’ve been waiting two months to hear you say those words. You want me to bring a ladder?”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Silence , Waiting , Help

“Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag. Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 9 “A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass” section 1 (p. 433)

“Speaking of Sonya… I was thinking of something earlier. Something Wolfe said."

"Why, Adrian. Were you paying attention after all?"

"Don't start, Sage," he warned.(p 211)”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Thinking , Wolf

“Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Books , Faith

“My god, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them? When you stand in the light. They're amazing… like molten gold. I could paint those… They're beautiful. You're beautiful.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

God , Beauty , Light , Painting

“Sage,” Adrian declared. “These hands don’t do manual labor.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“Sydney Katherine Sage,” he said, his green eyes full of love and earnestness. “Would you do a brooding, deadbeat Moroi the honor of being his wife?”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Love

“A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.”

Henry Adams book The Education of Henry Adams

Source: The Education of Henry Adams

Bird

“SAGE. A wise and Holy man who died a long time ago. No one modern qualifies.”

Diana Wynne Jones book The Tough Guide To Fantasyland

Source: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

Time

“Sage," he said. "What are you wearing?"
I sighed and stared down at the dress. "I know. It's red. Don't start. I'm tired of hearing about it."
"Funny," he said. "I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at it.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Thinking

“To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”

Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

Thinking , Time

“Note even Moroi give licenses to infants, Sage”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“It’s Kahlua, Sage. Packed with sugar and coffee flavor.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Coffee

“Look, Sage. I don't know much about chemistry or computer hacking or photosynthery, but this is something I've got a lot of experience with." I think he mean photosynthesis, but I didn't correct him. "Use my knowledge. Don't let it go to waste.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Knowledge , Thinking

“But perhaps the best part of all was that I, Sydney Katherine Sage, guilty of constantly analyzing the world around me, well, I stopped thinking.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World , Thinking , Parting

“If time and space, as sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Love , Feeling , Time , Sun

“He shook his head in mock sympathy. "I tell you, Sage. Sometimes I think I am the one who needs to take out the restraining order on you.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Thinking

“I don’t know, Sage. You threw yourself in the line of pepper spray for me. You must like me just a little bit.” “I— I figured it’d be a shame to ruin your pretty face,” I stammered.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees”

Philip Roth book The Ghost Writer

Source: The Ghost Writer

Life , Tree , Childhood

“Who knows more about male weakness: you or me? Use my knowledge, Sage.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Knowledge

“Sage.” He laughed. “I’m into anything, so long as you’re with me.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“Oh my God, I thought. I’m rooming with the Sydney Sage of re-education.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

God , Education

“But each time you use spirit, you're more likely to go crazy.”
“Already crazy about you, Sage.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Time

“Of course they didn't give us this much, Sage. But I had to make sure I nailed my first assignment. Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Parent , Perfection

“You’re a solid person, Sage. You’re easy on the eyes, if a little skinny, and your ability to memorize useless information is going to totally hook in some guy.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Guy , Personality

“Why would you do that? Why would you act like you didn't know how to drive?"
"Isn't it obvious, Sage? No, of course it isn't. I did it so I'd have a reason to be around you - one I knew you couldn't refuse”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“Did you just use juxtaposition in a sentence?"
"Yes, Sage" he said patiently. "We use it all the time with art,… That, and I know how to use a dictionary”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Art , Time

“Isn’t it obvious, Sage? No, of course it isn’t. I did it so I’d have a reason to be around you — one I knew you couldn’t refuse.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“What about you, Sage? I know we don't have to worry about you violating the dress code. Did you have fun at your Alchemist spa this weekend?”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“Titchy little snapperwhippers like you should not be higgling around with an old sage and onions who is hundreds of years more than you.”

Roald Dahl The BFG

Source: The BFG

“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

The Tables Turned, st. 6 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Evil

“Are you in a suit?' I managed at last, my voice choking up. 'You didn’t have to dress up for me.'

'Quiet, Sage,' he said. 'I’ll make the hilarious one-liners during this daring rescue.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

“Is Adrian here?”
“Who?”
“Adrian. Tall. Brown hair. Green eyes.”
She frowned. “Do you mean Jet?”
“I … I’m not sure. Does he smoke like a chimney?”
The girl nodded sagely. “Yup. You must mean Jet.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Girl

“Nice blouse, Sage,” Adrian told me, deadpan. “It really brings out the khaki in your pants.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIV. 463–466 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Context: Tis sweet to play the fool in time and place,
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile,
The grave in merry measures frisk about,
And many a long-repented word bring out.

Smile , Wine

“Sage?" Adrian lightly touched my arm, and I jumped at the feel of his fingertips against my skin. "You okay?"
"I don't know," I said softly. "I just thought of something crazy."
"Welcome to my world.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World , Feeling

“As someone very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez Brothers: anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

“Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All (1990)
Context: ... she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it — which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call "sages," and those who act upon it, we call "artists."

People , Imagination , Reality

“Kunti, or Pritha, is the daughter of Shoora of the Vrishnis, given away when just a child to her father’s childless friend Kuntibhoja. This rankles deep within her; she voices her resentment pointedly both before and after the Kurukshetra war. Growing up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments, she finds no mother; Kuntibhoja himself hands her over, in adolescence, to the vagaries of the eccentric, w:Irascibleirascible and fiery sage Durvasa. Should she displease the sage, she is warned, it will dishonour her guardian’s clan as well as her own.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

War , Daughters

“Hinduism is like a great reservoir of water from which many streams take their rise and to which they again repair after passing through many strange and fair lands. It is a great, creative matrix giving birth to many beautiful and living forms. Itself a historical, it has given birth to many sects and branches with interesting, chequered histories. Paying sole allegiance to the Guide within seated in the cave of the heart, it has put forward from time to time many teachers and sages of incomparable power and vision, incarnating the very Gods above and within.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

God , Beauty , History , Birth

“Our sages have taught us to learn one thing; `As in the Self, so in the Universe.' It is not possible to scan the universe as it is to scan the self. Know the self and you know the universe.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (8 April 1926)
1920s

Learning , Universe

“Hail the mild morning, where the dawn began,
The full fruition of the hopes of man.
Where sage Experience seals the sacred cause,
And that rare union, Liberty and Laws,
Speaks to the reas'ning race “to freedom rise,
Like them be equal, and like them be wise."”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)

Law , Hope , Freedom

“Does it matter in the least to God whether you believe or not? Even the sage Suka Deva was to Him like a big ant at the most. Infinite is He. How much can you understand of Him?”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 327]

God , Understanding

“In spite of every sage whom Greece can show,
Unerring wisdom never dwelt below;
Folly in all of every age we see,
The only difference lies in the degree.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse :
Tous les hommes sont fous, et, malgré tous leurs soins,
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
Satire 4, l. 37
Satires (1716)

Wisdom , Age

“It is only he, possessed of all sagely qualities that can exist under heaven, who shows himself quick in apprehension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intelligence, and all-embracing knowledge, fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous, generous, benign, and mild, fitted to exercise forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave, never swerving from the Mean, and correct, fitted to command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative, and searching, fitted to exercise discrimination. All-embracing is he and vast, deep and active as a fountain, sending forth in their due season his virtues. All-embracing and vast, he is like Heaven. Deep and active as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all reverence him; he speaks, and the people all believe him; he acts, and the people all are pleased with him.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

People , Exercises , Search , Intelligence

“Our Sages refer to Prayer as "Service of the Heart". But the heart cannot work properly unless the brain functions to stimulate and control its operation. In the physiology of Prayer, too, the mind plays as vital a role as the heart.”

Immanuel Jakobovits (1921–1999) British rabbi

Foreword, p. ix to "Following the Synagogue Service" by Jeffrey Cohen, Gnesia Publications, 1997, .

Heart

“The God of the sages does not merely ordain; God also listens.”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

God

“Yoga, as it was understood by its sages, is designed to satisfy all the human needs in a comprehensive, seamless whole. Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness –oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves. We become the harmonious microcosm in the universal microcosm. Oneness, what I call integration, is the foundation for wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Peace , Freedom , Universe

“All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (September 8, 1891)
Letters

Confidence

“He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 629
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Wisdom

“The sage and the contemner of wealth most resemble God.”

Quintus Sextius Roman philosopher

Sentences of Sextus

God , Wealth

“In all this world, I pray thee, who
Is virtuous, heroic, true?
Firm in his vows, of grateful mind,
To every creature good and kind?
Alone most fair to all men’s eyes?
Devoid of envy, firm, and sage,
Whose tranquil soul ne'er yields to rage?
Whom, when his warrior wrath is high,
Do Gods embattled fear and fly?
Whose noble might and gentle skill
The triple world can guard from ill? Who is the best of princes, he
Who loves his people’s good to see.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Source: King of Siam Rama I The-Ramayana https://books.google.co.in/books?id=OvqbCHa3zWkC&pg=PA19, Islamic Books, 1967, p. 19.

Love , Men , God , People

“Pythagoras said that this world was like a stage,
Whereon many play their parts; the lookers-on, the sage
Philosophers are, saith he, whose part is to learn
The manners of all nations, and the good from the bad to discern.”

Richard Edwardes Damon and Pythias

Damon and Pythias (written in 1564, published in 1571), lines 348-351.

World , Learning , Parting

“Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)

Love , Death , Strong

“The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

Fate , Law

“Trust me, I’ve read your German sage
To far more purpose e’er than you did;
You find it in his wisest page,
Whom God deludes is well deluded.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Dipsychus, Pt. II, sc. ii.

God , Reading

“Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door belongs to Guan Yin Bodhisattva. We follow and take refuge in the three Sages of the West. Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door is the solution to resolving the problems of the human realm. Our practice is based on Zen Buddhism and wisdom in life. Our practice is aimed at transcending the mundane world and it is based on the Pure Land school of Buddhism. Hence, Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door is an integration of the essence of various schools of Buddhism. Thus, the objective of our practice is the Four Sublime States of Loving-kindness, Compassion, Appreciative joy and Equanimity.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Los Angeles, (September 2016)[citation needed]
Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door

Love , Life , Wisdom , World

“Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.”

Li Zhi (philosopher) (1527–1602) Chinese philosopher

[Saussy, Haun, Lee, Pauline, Handler-Spitz, Rivi, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings, 2016, Columbia University Press, 0231541538, https://books.google.com/books?id=4Xm0CwAAQBAJ, Prefaces, 4–5]

People

“"Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him.
"Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man ever the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.
"And how will this come to pass?" He paused and lowered his voice. "In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world."”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 20
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

Death , Men , Truth , Age

“His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.”

Richard Realf (1832–1878) American poet

Apocalypse.

Love , Life , Men , Truth

“All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous "Know thyself" inscribed in the temple of Delphi.”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/lorenz.htm
On Aggression (1963)

People , Error , Nature , Universe

“Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Ode to the Memory of Burns
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Truth , Heart

“There is nothing difficult about becoming a sage, and nothing false about transcending the world of appearances.”

Li Zhi (philosopher) (1527–1602) Chinese philosopher

[Saussy, Haun, Lee, Pauline, Handler-Spitz, Rivi, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings, 2016, Columbia University Press, 0231541538, https://books.google.com/books?id=4Xm0CwAAQBAJ, Prefaces, 4]

World , Appearance , Falseness

“After half a lifetime of poking fun at Bernard Shaw's materialism Kingsmill was not above touching the despised sage for ten quid. Even in the Australian school of literary morals, we weren't allowed to slag a man and put the bit on him simultaneously: it had to be one or the other.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Richard Ingrams at Doubting Castle'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

School

“Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Odes, Book iv, Ode 9, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 31.

Dead

“We don’t know anything about silent sages, buried knowledge, the eye of the mute poet, serene seers, yet how many talkative destroyers, prophets and ideologues, teachers and beautifiers there are on the other side.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Hush," p. 61
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Big Chamber”

Knowledge , Teachers

“The likeness of man above the throne is divided, the upper part being the colour of chashmal, the lower part like the appearance of fire. As regards the word chashmal, it has been explained to be the compound of two words chas and mal, including two different notions, viz., chash signifying "swiftness," and mal denoting "pause." The two different notions are here joined in one word in order to indicate figuratively the two different parts,—the upper part and the lower. We have already given a second explanation, namely, that chashmal includes the two notions of speach and silence; in accordance with the saying of our Sages, "At times they are silent, at times they speak."”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.7

Silence , Appearance , Time , Parting

“Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.”
Taciturnitas stulto homini pro sapientia est.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 914
Sentences

Fools

“In later years, I argued with Professor Julian Aleksandrowicz because he used some therapeutic activities that I did not like, such as the debatable use of suppressive drugs. I once criticized him for that in public. I was already a professor when I had a nice conversation with Professor Aleksandrowicz. I started, „Sir, as a scientist, I …”. He interrupted me saying – „There are three categories of people involved in science: scientists, these are the ones who take the test tubes, they pour something into them; there are lettered scholars, like you; and finally, sir, there are sages.” Someone later pointed out that I did not answer him – „You are a sage, sir.””

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Aleksandrowicz had something of a sage in himself.
Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

People , Science