Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Once, while trampling on Plato's carpets when Plato had invited friends from Dionysius, he said, "I trample on Plato's vainglory." To which Plato replied, "How much pride, Diogenes, you display, while seeming not to be proud!" Others say that Diogenes said, "I trample on Plato's pride," and that Plato responded, "With another kind of pride, Diogenes!" Sotion, in his fourth book, says that Plato himself said this to the Dog. Diogenes once asked him for wine, and then also for dried figs; Plato sent him an entire jar. Whereupon Diogenes said, "If you are asked how many two and two are, will you answer twenty? In this way you neither give in proportion to what is asked, nor answer in accordance with the question." Thus he mocked him as long-winded.

​When asked where in Greece he had seen good men, he said, "Men, nowhere; but boys in Lacedaemon." Once, when no one approached while he was discoursing seriously, he began to whistle a tune; and when a crowd gathered, he reproached them for coming eagerly to frivolous things, but lagging behind with disdain when it came to serious matters. He used to say that men compete in digging and kicking, but no one competes for true nobility. He was amazed that grammarians investigate the misfortunes of Odysseus, while remaining ignorant of their own. Furthermore, he marveled that musicians tune the strings on the lyre, while possessing dispositions of the soul that are completely out of tune;

​that astronomers gaze up at the sun and moon, but overlook the things at their feet; that orators make a show of speaking about justice, but never practice it; and that lovers of money blame wealth, yet love it to excess. He also condemned those who praise the just because they are above money, yet envy those who have great wealth. It troubled him too that men sacrifice to the gods for health, but in the sacrifice itself dine against their health. He marveled also at the slaves who, seeing their masters eating greedily, snatch nothing of what is being consumed.

​He used to praise those who were about to marry and did not marry, those about to set sail and did not sail, those about to enter public life and did not enter, those about to rear children and did not rear them, and those preparing to live with dynasts and yet did not approach them. He also said that one ought to extend one's hands to friends without having the fingers closed. Menippus in The Sale of Diogenes says that when he was captured and being sold, he was asked what he knew how to do. He replied, "To govern men." And to the herald he said, "Proclaim whether anyone wishes to purchase a master for himself." When forbidden to sit down, he said, "It makes no difference; for fish too are sold no matter how they lie."

​And he said he wondered that when buying a pot or a dish we ring it to test it, but with a man we are content with the sight alone. He told Xeniades, who had bought him, that he must obey him, even if he were a slave; for if a physician or a helmsman were a slave, one would obey him. And Eubulus says in the work entitled The Sale of Diogenes that he trained the sons of Xeniades in this way: after their other studies, he taught them to ride, shoot with the bow, sling, and throw the javelin; and then in the palaestra he did not permit the trainer to treat them like athletes, but solely for the sake of a healthy glow and good physical condition.