The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
He once said to a man who was addressing anxious entreaties to a
courtesan, “What can you wish to obtain, you wretched man, that you
had not better be disappointed in?” Seeing a man reeking all over with
unguents, he said to him, “Have a care, lest the fragrance of your head
give a bad odour to your life.” One of his sayings was, that servants
serve their masters, and that wicked men are the slaves of their
appetites. Being asked why slaves were called ἀνδράποδα, he replied,
“Because they have the feet of men (τοὺς πόδας ἀνδρῶν), and a soul such
as you who are asking this question.” He once asked a profligate fellow
for a mina; and when he put the question to him, why he asked others for
an obol, and him for a mina, he said, “Because I hope to get something
from the others another time, but the Gods alone know whether I shall
ever extract anything from you again.” Once he was reproached for asking
favours, while Plato never asked for any; and he said:—
“He asks as well as I do, but he does it
Bending his head, that no one else may hear.”
One day he saw an unskilful archer shooting; so he went and sat down by
the target, saying, “Now I shall be out of harm’s way.” He used to say,
that those who were in love were disappointed in regard of the pleasure
they expected. When he was asked whether death was an evil, he replied,
“How can that be an evil which we do not feel when it is present?” When
Alexander was once standing by him, and saying, “Do not you fear me?” He
replied, “No; for what are you, a good or an evil?” And as he said that
he was good, “Who, then,” said Diogenes, “fears the good?” He used to
say, that education was, for the young sobriety, for the old comfort, for
the poor riches, and for the rich an ornament. When Didymus the adulterer
was once trying to cure the eye of a young girl (κόρης), he said, “Take
care, lest when you are curing the eye of the maiden, you do not hurt the
pupil.”[75] A man once said to him, that his friends laid plots against
him; “What then,” said he, “are you to do, if you must look upon both
your friends and enemies in the same light?”
On one occasion he was asked, what was the most excellent thing among
men; and he said, “Freedom of speech.” He went once into a school, and
saw many statues of the Muses, but very few pupils, and said, “Gods,
and all my good schoolmasters, you have plenty of pupils.” He was in
the habit of doing everything in public, whether in respect of Venus or
Ceres; and he used to put his conclusions in this way to people: “If
there is nothing absurd in dining, then it is not absurd to dine in the
market-place. But it is not absurd to dine, therefore it is not absurd to
dine in the market-place.” And as he was continually doing manual work in
public, he said one day, “Would that by rubbing my belly I could get rid
of hunger.” Other sayings also are attributed to him, which it would take
a long time to enumerate, there is such a multiplicity of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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