The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
he rose up and left the theatre, saying that it was an absurdity to
think it right to seek for a slave if one could not find him, but to
let virtue be altogether disregarded. The question was once put to him
by a man whether he would advise him to marry or not? And he replied,
“Whichever you do, you will repent it.” He often said, that he wondered
at those who made stone statues, when he saw how careful they were that
the stone should be like the man it was intended to represent, but how
careless they were of themselves, as to guarding against being like the
stone. He used also to recommend young men to be constantly looking in
the glass, in order that, if they were handsome, they might be worthy
of their beauty; and if they were ugly, they might conceal their
unsightly appearance by their accomplishments. He once invited some rich
men to dinner, and when Xanthippe was ashamed of their insufficient
appointments, he said, “Be of good cheer; for if our guests are sensible
men, they will bear with us; and if they are not, we need not care about
them.” He used to say, “That other men lived to eat, but that he ate
to live.” Another saying of his was, “That to have a regard for the
worthless multitude, was like the case of a man who refused to take one
piece of money of four drachmas as if it were bad, and then took a heap
of such coins and admitted them to be good.” When Æschines said, “I am a
poor man, and have nothing else, but I give you myself;” “Do you not,” he
replied, “perceive that you are giving me what is of the greatest value?”
He said to some one, who was expressing indignation at being overlooked
when the thirty had seized on the supreme power, “Do you, then, repent of
not being a tyrant too?” A man said to him, “The Athenians have condemned
you to death.” “And nature,” he replied, “has condemned them.” But some
attribute this answer to Anaxagoras. When his wife said to him, “You
die undeservedly.” “Would you, then,” he rejoined, “have had me deserve
death?” He thought once that some one appeared to him in a dream, and
said:—
On the third day you’ll come to lovely Phthia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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