sages QUOTES

41 " [I]t is no doubt true that our image of what a messiah might look like may keep us from recognizing the real thing when it stands before us. Could it be that we have embellished the long-awaited event with so many aggadic flourishes that we can no longer recognize the reality when it happens? Could our overly literal reading of our sages’ poetic descriptions have led us to overlook completely the miracle as it happened?
One of the dangers of taking the statements and speculations of our sages as literal truth—when they were not meant as such—is the distortion of our expectations. "

― Nathan Lopes Cardozo , Foreword to A Damaged Mirror: A story of memory and redemption: Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo discusses prophecy and memory

42 " Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. "

― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

43 " Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. "

― George Eliot , The Mill on the Floss

44 " The ancient sages of Kashmir Shaivism did not look for the truth only in logic and intellectual speculation. They relied much more on their experiences during deep yogic states to guide them in understanding and clarifying age-old philosophical dilemmas. They discovered the Absolute within themselves and found that they were one with it. They studied the Self that lay beyond the mind and the ego, and found that It was divine, creative energy. God was not some distant ruler or some inert entity. These sages realized and recognized that He was within everything, was the vitality of life itself, and was always the one transcendent Reality as well. In this way Kashmir Shaivites taught the principle of theistic absolutism.

For centuries Indian philosophers have been debating whether this world is real or an illusion. In the process of watching the unfolding of their own creative energy during meditation, the sages of Kashmir found the source of all creation, and witnessed how everything in this universe evolves from this one absolute Reality into manifestation which is also real. Because all creation exists within the Absolute, they established the principle of spiritual realism.

— B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. x "

― Balajinnatha Pandita , Specific Principles of Kashmir Saivism

45 " The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life. "

― F. Max Müller , India: What it Can Teach Us

46 " Great sages began as great students. "

47 " Bugle" Black beetles know where the most recent bonesbake in the heat, tendons and meat long gone, bleached white, and if you give them cheap wine --drizzle a few red drops on a flat stone--they will lead you to a barren gulchsurrounded by sages and nettles, dirtburnt to powdery sand and sharp thorns. Hunchabove the skeleton, bow your head, start reciting verses you learned as a child, there, under the sun with rocks and brush, bare locust tree a telling reliquary of dust to dust, all so brutally hot. You must pull ribs from that rotting body,words that matter: love me, love me not. "

48 " 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. "

49 " To live content with small means to seek elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion to be worthy not respectable and wealthy not rich to study hard think quietly talk gently act frankly to listen to the stars and birds to babes and sages with open heart to bear on cheerfully do all bravely awaiting occasions worry never in a word to like the spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. "

50 " To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers-or both. "

51 " We search the world for truth we cull The good the pure the beautiful From all old flower fields of the soul And weary seekers of the best We come back laden from our quest To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read. "

52 " To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers or both. "

53 " Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva. "

54 " The philosophical point is that our happiness and wellbeing is not based on incomes rising. This is not just the wisdom of sages but of ordinary people. Prosperity is more social and psychological: it's about identification, affiliation, participation in society and a sense of purpose. "

55 " Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure. "

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