Book 6
2.64
When he was dining in a temple, and in the course of the meal loaves not free from dirt were put on the table, he took them up and threw them away, declaring that nothing unclean ought to enter a temple. To the man who said to him, You don’t know anything, although you are a philosopher, he replied, Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy. When some one brought a child to him and declared him to be highly gifted and of excellent character, What need then, said he, has he of me? Those who say admirable things, but fail to do them, he compared to a harp; for the harp, like them, he said, has neither hearing nor perception. He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, This, he said, is what I practise doing all my life.
2.65
Seeing a young man behaving effeminately, Are you not ashamed, he said, that your own intention about yourself should be worse than nature’s: for nature made you a man, but you are forcing yourself to play the woman. Observing a fool tuning a psaltery, Are you not ashamed, said he, to give this wood concordant sounds, while you fail to harmonize your soul with life? To one who protested that he was ill adapted for the study of philosophy, he said, Why then do you live, if you do not care to live well? To one who despised his father, Are you not ashamed, he said, to despise him to whom you owe it that you can so pride yourself? Noticing a handsome youth chattering in unseemly fashion, Are you not ashamed, he said, to draw a dagger of lead from an ivory scabbard?
2.66
Being reproached with drinking in a tavern, Well, said he, I also get my hair cut in a barber’s shop. Being reproached with accepting a cloak from Antipater, he replied: The gods’ choice gifts are nowise to be spurned.Il. iii. 65.
