On one occasion he was being praised by some wicked men, and said, “I am sadly afraid that I must have done some wicked thing.” One of his favourite sayings was, “That the fellowship of brothers of one mind was stronger than any fortified city.” He used to say, “That those things were the best for a man to take on a journey, which would float with him if he were shipwrecked.” He was once reproached for being intimate with wicked men, and said, “Physicians also live with those who are sick; and yet they do not catch fevers.” He used to say, “that it was an absurd thing to clean a cornfield of tares, and in war to get rid of bad soldiers, and yet not to rid one’s self in a city of the wicked citizens.” When he was asked what advantage he had ever derived from philosophy, he replied, “The advantage of being able to converse with myself.” At a drinking party, a man once said to him, “Give us a song,” and he replied, “Do you play us a tune on the flute.” When Diogenes asked him for a tunic, he bade him fold his cloak. He was asked on one occasion what learning was the most necessary, and he replied, “To unlearn one’s bad habits.” And he used to exhort those who found themselves ill spoken of, to endure it more than they would any one’s throwing stones at them. He used to laugh at Plato as conceited; accordingly, once when there was a fine procession, seeing a horse neighing, he said to Plato, “I think you too would be a very frisky horse:” and he said this all the more, because Plato kept continually praising the horse. At another time, he had gone to see him when he was ill, and when he saw there a dish in which Plato had been sick, he said, “I see your bile there, but I do not see your conceit.” He used to advise the Athenians to pass a vote that asses were horses; and, as they thought that irrational, he said, “Why, those whom you make generals have never learnt to be really generals, they have only been voted such.”