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

He thought as a sage, though he felt like a man.
James Beattie

In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
Xun Zi

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.
J. M. Coetzee

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

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.
Lao Tzu

The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.
J. M. Coetzee

The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
Mason Cooley

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.
Lao Tzu

Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.
Sinclair Lewis