The sage is a personality type

The sage is a type of personality – he is no more nor less then anyone else. When the sages describe their enlightened lifestyle it would sound to most people insufferably boring – they would not want it at all. The sage is said to avoid interfering in the world, not because he thinks it is harmful to interfere, but because he has no interest in doing so. It would bore him, and he wouldn’t know what to do. If you are drawn to the literature of the sage, always remember that there is plenty of the opposite type of literature where the man of action is described in glowing terms and the sage is seen as unworldly and irrelevant. Men of action read this literature, and like the sages, probably think they are reading about the ultimate modus operandi of life.