For the sage, every star, every flower, is metaphysically a proof of the Infinite.

In the Middle Ages there were still only two or three types of greatness: the saint and the hero, and also the sage; and then on a lesser scale and as it were by reflection, the pontiff and the prince; as for the “genius” and the “artist”, those glories of the Lay universe, their like was not yet born.

Saints and heroes are like the appearance of stars on earth; they rescind after their death to the firmament, to their eternal home; they are almost pure symbols, spiritual signs only provisionally detached from the celestial iconostasis in which they have been enshrined since the creation of the world.

Frithjof Schuon