Diogenes said:
“People eat for the sake of pleasure, but for that same reason are unwilling to desist from eating.
Happiness is this and nothing else, to be of truly good heart and never distressed, wherever one is and whatever the moment may bring.
To someone who said life is bad, he said, ‘Not life, but life lived badly.’
Just as house-slaves are at the beck and call of their masters, so bad people are at the beck and call of their desires.
May I recount what Diogenes did with the man who declared that Athens was an expensive city. He took him in hand and led him off to a perfume-seller, and asked how much a half-pint of myrrh cost. ‘A mina’, relied the seller, and Diogenes cried out, ‘The city is indeed expensive!’ And then he led the man off to a butcher’s shop and asked the price of a choice cut of meat. ‘Three drachmas’, relied the butcher, and Diogenes said, ‘The city is indeed expensive!’ Next, to a seller of fine wools, where he asked the price of a full fleece; ‘a mina’ was the reply, and he cried again, ‘The city is indeed expensive!’ ‘Here now’, he said, and took the man to a lupin-seller and asked, ‘How much for a quart?’ ‘A copper’, was the reply, and Diogenes cried, ‘How cheap the city is!’ And then again to a seller of dried figs: ‘Two coppers.’ And to a seller of myrtle-berries, ‘Two coppers’; ‘How cheap the city is!’ So the fact of the matter is that the city is not cheap or expensive in itself, but expensive if one lives expensively, and cheap if one lives cheaply.
Some people say what is right but do not hear themselves, just as lyres make beautiful sounds but cannot perceive them.
To come off well in life, one needs either good friends or ardent enemies; for friends instruct you, and enemies expose your faults.
When asked what he had gained from philosophy, he said, ‘To be able to associate with everyone with absolute confidence.’
The man who masters pleasure is not the one who abstains from it, but the one who enjoys it without allowing himself to be carried away by it; in just the same way as the master of a horse or ship is not the one who has nothing to do with it, but the one who guides it where he wants.
I was sitting in the courtyard sticking pieces of papyrus together, when Alexander, son of Philip, came up and stood directly in front of me, cutting off my sunlight. Being no longer able to see the joins of the sheets, I looked up, and then recognized who it was. On recognizing me in my turn as I glanced up, he greeted me and offered me his right hand. So I returned his greeting and addressed him as follows: ‘You truly and invincible, young man, seeing that you are able to achieve the same things as gods; for look, just as the moon is said to eclipse the sun when it gets in front of it, you too have achieved that here when you came in and stood beside me.’ Alexander exclaimed, ‘You’ll have your joke, Diogenes’, to which I replied, ‘How do you mean? Can’t you see that I’m unable to get on with my work because I can’t see, as though it were night? And although I have no interest in talking with you now, I am actually talking with you.’ ‘So King Alexander holds no interest for you?’ ‘None at all,’ I replied, ‘since his wars do not affect anything of mine, nor am I being plundered, as are the Macedonians and Spartans, and others too who serve a king.’ ‘But I could be of interest to you because of your poverty.’ ‘What poverty?’ I asked. ‘That poverty of yours’, he said, ‘which makes you have have to beg for all your needs.’ ‘Poverty does not rest’, I replied, ‘in having no money, nor is begging a bad thing, but real poverty lies in desiring everything, as is the case with you, and violently too. Thus the springs and the earth help me out in my poverty, as do even caves and goat-hides too, and no one makes war against me on account of it, either on the land or sea; but as I was born, mark it well, so also do I live. But for your position neither the earth nor sea is found to be an ally...You try to climb up to heaven, paying no heed to Homer when he warns us not to strive for that, and describes the sufferings of the Aloadai to teach us to live within our proper limits.’ As I was making all these points in a most inspired tone, Alexander was overcome with great awe, and leaning toward one of his companions, he said, ‘If I had not been born as Alexander, I would have been Diogenes.’ He then asked me to get up and tried to take me away with him, urging me to accompany him on his campaigns; and it was only with reluctance that he let me go.”
Latent Thoughts #10
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Source: https://www.amazon.com/Diogenes-Cynic-Sayings-Anecdotes-Moralists/dp/0199589240
Painting: Alexander the Great Refuses to Take Water by Giuseppe Cades