Diogenes

“ But Diogenes was frantic with grief, detested town-life and was fond of living on his own estate and devoting himself entirely to the works of the ancient writers which others read aloud to him. For as he was bereft of sight he used the eyes of others for reading. He was a man of such wonderful capabilities that even without eyes he easily understood things that people with eyes find difficult to follow. ”

“ Ugh! what about your playing the part of a gentleman now?"
"The play was short, O wise Pythagoras," retorted Diogenes with imperturbable good humour, "the curtain has already come down upon the last act. I am once more a knave, a merchant ready to flatter the customer who will buy his wares: Hech there, sir, my lord! what are your needs? My sword, my skin, they are yours to command! so many guilders, sir, and I will kill your enemy for you, fight your battles, abduct the wench that pleases you. So many guilders! ”

“ Now consider whether Diogenes did not above all other men profess this belief, since he freely exposed his body to hardships so that he might make it stronger than it was by nature. He allowed himself to act only as the light of reason shows us that we ought to act; and the perturbations that attack the soul and are derived from the body, to which this envelope of ours often constrains us for its sake to pay too much attention, he did not take into account at all. ”

“ In strange contrast to these two worthies was their friend whom they called Diogenes. He himself, had you questioned him ever so closely, could not have told you from what ancestry or what unknown parent had come to him that air of swagger and of assurance which his avowed penury had never the power to subdue. Tall above the average, powerfully built and solidly planted on firm limbs he looked what he easily might have been, a gentleman to the last inch of him. The brow was fine and broad, the nose sensitive and well shaped, the mouth a perfect expression of gentle irony. ”

“ If nothing is left undone by them, neither shall anything be left unspoken by me. Diogenes, when he was being sold, chiding like a teacher one of these degenerate creatures, said very manfully, “Come, youngster, buy for yourself a man,” chastising his meretriciousness by an ambiguous speech. But for those who are men to shave and smooth themselves, how ignoble! As for dyeing of hair, and anointing of grey locks, and dyeing them yellow, these are practices of abandoned effeminates; and their feminine combing of themselves is a thing to be let alone. ”

“ Plutarch forces the morality of his personages to the fore; Diogenes gives details of both the good and the bad in his. Plutarch is solid and systematic; Diogenes is lighter and lacks system. I prefer Diogenes Laertius to Plutarch, and if I were especially interested in any of the illustrious ancients of whom they write, I should vastly prefer the letters of the men themselves, if any existed, or otherwise the gossip of their tentmakers or washerwomen, to any lives written of them by either Diogenes Laertius or Plutarch. ”

“ Alexander passing through Corinth on one occasion, had the curiosity to see Diogenes, who happened to be there at that time. He found him basking in the sun in the grove Craneum, where he was cementing his tub. "I am," said he to him, "the great king Alexander." "And I," replied the philosopher, "am the dog Diogenes." "Are you not afraid of me?" continued Alexander. "Are you good or bad?" returned Diogenes. "I am good," rejoined Alexander. "And who would be afraid of one who is good?" replied Diogenes. ”

“ And if Diogenes did sometimes visit a courtesan—though even this happened only once perhaps or not even once—let him who would be a Cynic first satisfy us that he is, like Diogenes, a man of solid worth, and then if he see fit to do that sort of thing openly and in the sight of all men, we shall not reproach him with it or accuse him. ”

“ Diogenes introduced us informally, if you recall the afternoon you called here. He is a dreadfully pushing person, Diogenes; but he’s a dear when you know him.”
“I daresay,” Mr Musgrave answered, correctly surmising that Diogenes was the bull-dog. “But I dislike dogs.”
“I should never have thought that,” replied the girl, looking faintly surprised; “because Diogenes likes you. He never speaks to people he doesn’t like; and dogs as a rule know at once when people are not sympathetic. ”

“ Not that Diogenes tried to rival the gods, but he lived more happily than one who is counted the happiest of men, and he used actually to assert that he lived more happily than such a man. And if you do not believe me, try his mode of life in deed and not in word, and you will perceive the truth. ”

“ Then, the hoary, hairy, dog-baptized, who scoffed at all the decencies of life, not to speak of its amenities, and had no gentle Plato's pride of refinement, with all the brutal pride of coarseness—did Diogenes worthily represent the best functions of manhood? ”

“ Similarly they relate of Diogenes of Sinope,262 when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake, and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? ”

“ Diogenes, the grammarian, who used to hold public disquisitions, at Rhodes every sabbath-day, once refused him admittance upon his coming to hear him out of course, and sent him a message by a servant, postponing his admission until the next seventh day. Diogenes afterwards coming to Rome, and waiting at his door to be allowed to pay his respects to him, he sent him word to come again at the end of seven years. To some governors, who advised him to load the provinces with taxes, he answered, “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, his sheep.” ”

“ She held the theory that if Diogenes had stayed at home and attended to business, instead of prowling around Athens with a smelly lantern, he would have been visited by any number of honest men. Everything comes to him who waits might be a trite proverb, but experience had taught her that it was a true one. ”

“ Plato.
Is not this a contradiction to your own precepts, O Diogenes ? Have you not been censuring me, I need not say how severely, for my intercourse with Dionysius? and yet surely he was wealthy, surely he required the advice of a philosopher, surely he could have done much good with it.
Diogenes.
An Athenian is more degraded by becoming the counsellor of a king, than a king is degraded by becoming the schoolmaster of paupers in a free city. ”

“ At Olympia, when the herald proclaimed Dioxippus to be victor over the men, Diogenes protested, "Nay, he is victorious over slaves, I over men."
Still he was loved by the Athenians. At all events, when a youngster broke up his tub, they gave the boy a flogging and presented Diogenes with another. Dionysius the Stoic says that after Chaeronea he was seized and dragged off to Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed." ”

“ And Diogenes related everything in detail and did not even gloss over the attempted murder. In the morning Mouzaces took this written confession, and other papers addressed to Diogenes which he had found on him as a result of search. From these papers it was evident that the Empress Maria herself had known of Diogenes' attempted rebellion, though she would not entertain the idea of the Emperor's assassination even for a moment, but had diligently sought to divert Diogenes not only from the deed itself, but from the mere thought of it - these papers Mouzaces carried to the Emperor. ”

“ He is a man of action, an invincible swordsman, a——"
"Dondersteen, my good Hals!" ejaculated Diogenes gaily, "you'll shame me before these gentlemen."
"There's naught to be ashamed of, sir, in the eulogy of a friend," said Cornelius Beresteyn with quiet dignity, "and 'tis a pleasure to an old man like me to look on one so well favoured as yourself. Ah, sir! 'tis but sorrow that I shall know in future.... My daughter ... you have heard...?"
"I know the trouble that weighs on your soul, mynheer," replied Diogenes simply. ”

“ When some one asked that he might have back his cloak, "If it was a gift," replied Diogenes, "I possess it; while, if it was a loan, I am using it." A supposititious son having told him that he had gold in the pocket of his dress, "True," said he, "and therefore you sleep with it under your pillow." 63. On being asked what he had gained from philosophy, he replied, "This at least, if nothing else – to be prepared for every fortune." Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world." [37] Certain parents were sacrificing to the gods, that a son might be born to them. ”

“ In a treatise in which he discussed the nature of the Gods he contended for the unity of the Deity, and asserted that man is unable to know him by any sensible representation, since he is unlike any being on earth; and demonstrated the sufficiency of virtue for happiness, by the doctrine that outward events are regulated by God so as to benefit the wise and good.
Diogenes, a native of Sinope in Pontus, who was born b.c. 412, was one of his few disciples; he came at an early age to Athens, and became notorious for the most frantic excesses of moroseness and self-denial. ”

“ For it is evident that Diogenes was not impious, as you aver, but resembled those philosophers whom I mentioned a moment ago. For having regard to the circumstances in which his lot was cast, and next paying heed to the commands of the Pythian god, and knowing that the candidate for initiation must first be registered as an Athenian citizen, and if he be not an Athenian by birth must first become one by law, it was this he avoided, not initiation, because he considered that he was a citizen of the world ”

“ In times of yore, Diogenes, with a lantern in his hand, went through all the streets of Athens in broad day to seek a man: what could he find now in our great capital? breathing skeletons, women, children, horses, and that multitude of wheel carriages, the incommodious use of which crushes some to pieces and deprives others of the little strength they had left. ”

“ DIOGENES.
This eccentric individual was a native of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and born 419 B. C. Having been banished from his native place, with his father, upon the accusation of coining false money, he went to Athens, and requested Antisthenes, the Cynic, [11] to admit him among his disciples. That philosopher in vain attempted to drive away the unfortunate supplicant. He even threatened to strike him; but Diogenes told him he could not find a stoic hard enough to repel him, so long as he uttered things worthy of being remembered. ”

“ To ascribe these impure productions to Diogenes the Cynic, in spite of his well-known contempt for literature, was a temptation which even the ancients, though better informed than we are, could not wholly resist. Yet, after much sifting of evidence, it may be fairly believed that there were two Diogeneses—the one an Athenian, who wrote an innocuous play called Semele, the other a native perhaps of Gadara, who also bore the name of Œnomaus, and who perpetrated the seven indecent parodies. ”

“ Whereas it is notorious that most of our Professors never lay out a Farthing either in Pen, Ink, or Paper. Others are for deriving them from Diogenes, because several of the leading Men of the Sect have a great deal of the cynical Humour in them, and delight much in Sun-shine. But then again, Diogenes was content to have his constant Habitation in a narrow Tub; whilst our Philosophers are so far from being of his Opinion, that it's Death to them to be confined within the Limits of a good handsome convenient Chamber but for half an Hour. ”

“ To inure himself to hardship: in the winter
He wore mere rags.
But Diocles says that it was Diogenes who persuaded him to discard all his estate and his flocks, and to throw his money into the sea; and he says further, that the house of Crates was destroyed by Alexander, and that of Hipparchia under Philip. And he would very frequently drive away with his staff those of his relations who came after him, and endeavoured to dissuade him from his design; and he remained immoveable. ”

“ To a subtler critic it is obvious that Diogenes was a man of very strong and successful ambitions, though his ambitions were different from those of most men. He solved the problem of his own life by following with all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece. ”

“ Once when, in a crowd of people among whom was Diogenes, a certain youth made an unseemly noise, Diogenes struck him with his staff and said "And so, vile wretch, though you have done nothing that would give you the right to take such liberties in public, you are beginning here and before us to show your scorn of opinion?" So convinced was he that a man ought to subdue pleasure and passion before he proceeds to the final encounter of all [50] and strips to wrestle with those opinions which to the multitude are the cause of evils innumerable. ”