Sage Quotes

• The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

  Laozi

  Flower, Careers, Two

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• Sage is cleansing and sacred.

  Pink

  Sacred, Cleansing

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• Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

  Publilius Syrus

  Sarcastic, Communication, Silence

  "Sentences". Collection by Publilius Syrus. Maxim 914,

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• He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Solitude, Beast, Brutes

  Baltasar Gracian (2006). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.55, Shambhala Publications

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• The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

  Laozi

  Helping Others, Giving, Heaven

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• The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Children, Clever, Yield

  "The Sparrow". Book by Mary Doria Russell, October, 1996.

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• Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day and night; it is not of the earth. But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust. Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet body, my child, in your palpitating heart. The sea is beating its drums in joy, the flowers are a-tiptoe to kiss you. For heaven is born in you, in the arms of the mother- dust.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Mother, Sweet, Children

  Rabindranath Tagore, “Lover's Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven”

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• The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wisdom, Flames, Brilliance

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• The sage is one with the world, and lives in harmony with it.

  Laozi

  Taoism, World, Harmony

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• As a water bead on a lotus leaf, as water on a red lily, does not adhere, so the sage does not adhere to the seen, the heard, or the sensed.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Water, Doe

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• In truth, to attain to interior peace, one must be willing to pass through the contrary to peace. Such is the teaching of the Sages.

  Swami Brahmananda

  Peace, Teaching, Willing

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• Who can tell truth from falsehood any more? I say it, and you feel it in your hearts: no man or woman on this big small earth. How should our sages miss the mark of life, and our most skillful players lose the game? your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me: because all know, and no one understands.

  e. e. cummings

  Heart, Player, Men

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• As regards the quietude of the sage, he is not quiet because quietness is said to be good. He is quiet because the multitude of things cannot disturb his quietude. When water is still, one's beard and eyelashes are reflected in it. A skilled carpenter uses it in a level to obtain a measurement. If still water is so clear, how much more are the mental faculties! The mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth in which all things are reflected.

  Zhuangzi

  Eyelashes, Mirrors, Water

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• The Way of the Sage is to act but not to compete.

  Laozi

  Business, Work, Way

  Tao-te Ching ch. 81 (translation by Wing-Tsit Chan)

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• Many words are not proof of the wise man, because the sage only talk when it's needed, and the words are measured and corresponding with the need.

  Thales

  Wise, Men, Needs

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• Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Garden, Simplicity, Simple Life

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.212, Cosimo, Inc.

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• 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

  Butterfly, Space, Doe

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.223, Faber & Faber

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• Many Sages have said, "Your world is a dream. You're living in an illusion." They're referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are.

  Adyashanti

  Dream, Believe, Reality

  Adyashanti (2011). “Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering”, p.8, Sounds True

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• Be humble and you will remain entire. The sages do not display themselves, therefore they shine. They do not approve themselves, therefore they are noted. They do not praise themselves, therefore they have merit. They do not glory in themselves, therefore they excel.

  Laozi

  Humble, Humility, Shining

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• The sage seeks freedom from desire. He does not collect precious things. He learns not to hold on to ideas. He brings men back to what they have lost.

  Laozi

  Men, Ideas, Desire

  Laozi (1997). “道德经”, Vintage

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• Individuality in universality is the plan of creation. Each cell has its part in bringing about consciousness. Man is individual and at the same time universal. It is while realising our individual nature that we realise even our national and universal nature. Each is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. By practice one can feel universal Selfhood which is the essence of Hinduism. He who sees in every being his own Self is a Pandita (sage).

  Swami Vivekananda

  Men, Practice, Circles

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

  Richelle Mead

  Crazy, Use, Spirit

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Indigo Spell: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.68, Penguin

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• The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.

  Wang Yangming

  Inspirational, Mistake, Lying

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• The love of a Sage for his fellows likewise finds expression amongst mankind. Were he not told sop, he would not know that he loved his fellows. But whether he knows it or whether he does not know it, whether he hears it or whether he does not hear it, his love for his is without end, and mankind cease not to repose therein.

  Zhuangzi

  Expression, Taoism, Doe

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• For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Real, Book

  Ray Bradbury (1990). “Fahrenheit 451: Curriculum Unit”

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