Quotes About Sages

The notion of private ideas had no ground in [prehistoric] emotional experience.... The notion of a private interior in which the subject can close the door behind it, reflect upon and express itself was unknown before the early individualistic turn in antiquity; its propagandists were the men known as sages or philosophers.... who first gave the motif that true thought was only possible as independent thought, as thinking differently from the stupid masses....

sages leave speculation to the idle, and contemplate Nature.

Our sages have said, "Sleep is one sixtieth of death" (Talmud, Berachot 57b). If sleep is a form of death, then death is a form of sleep -- but a temporary withdrawal of vitality for the sake of reawakening to a higher quality of life

I wait for the hour when that divine Beauty, which ravished the hearts of the Hebrew prophets, Hindu and Buddhist visionaries, Christian and Sufi mystics, and Chinese sages, will make itself known in America today.

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.

The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrower and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.

The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.

We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons

What is it the Arab sages call death?" Pendergast went on. "The destroyer of all earthly pleasures. And how true it is: old age, sickness, and at last death comes to us all. Some console themselves with religion, others through denial, others through philosophy or mere stoicism.

The great sages of my Indian heritage had cultivated equanimity and detachment in the face of life's challenges, and I strove to emulate them by accepting what had happened to me with as much grace as I could muster.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

The srutis and the sages say that the objects are only mental creations. They have no substantive being. Investigate the matter and ascertain the truth of this statement. The result will be the conclusion that the objective world is in the subjective consciousness. The Self is thus the only Reality that permeates and also envelops the world. Since there is no duality, no thoughts will arise to disturb your peace. This is Realization of the Self. (p. 382)

The universe seems wondrous to me, with or without God. It has powerful lines and uncompromising ways. Patience and time sit like sages on the planets, strong and impersonal. There is a stark beauty to all of this.

The mind too can be imagined as a landscape, but only the minds of sages might resemble the short-grass prairie in which I played with getting lost and vanishing. The rest of us have caverns, glaciers, torrential rivers, heavy fogs, chasms that open up underfoot, even marauding wildlife bearing family names. It's a landscape in which getting lost is easy and some regions are terrifying to visit.

The sages compared a spider's web to man's lust for land, gold and women. The spider spins its web and waits. A fly comes from somewhere and gets caught in it. The spider pulls the fly in slowly and devours it. The three kinds of lust were like that.

Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung.

The Climber did not interfere. He praised the education I had received, and approved greatly of our immersions, just after birth, by the Sages, adding maliciously that nothing so sharpened the wits as a passion somewhat out of the common. ("The Story of Princess Zulkais and the Prince Kalilah")

O Solitude! where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?

I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute, From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O solitude! Where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, As sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

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

A man's genius seems to befriend the more when he reads with open heart, the masterpiece of masterminds, the sagacity of sages, and the ingenious words of geniuses of ages.

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.