Kitap 2
8.68
Diogenes, washing the dirt from his vegetables, saw him passing and jeered at him in these terms, If you had learnt to make these your diet, you would not have paid court to kings, to which his rejoinder was, And if you knew how to associate with men, you would not be washing vegetables. Being asked what he had gained from philosophy, he replied, The ability to feel at ease in any society. Being reproached for his extravagance, he said, If it were wrong to be extravagant, it would not be in vogue at the festivals of the gods. Being once asked what advantage philosophers have, he replied, Should all laws be repealed, we shall go on living as we do now.
8.69
When Dionysius inquired what was the reason that philosophers go to rich men’s houses, while rich men no longer visit philosophers, his reply was that the one know what they need while the other do not. When he was reproached by Plato for his extravagance, he inquired, Do you think Dionysius a good man? and the reply being in the affirmative, And yet, said he, he lives more extravagantly than I do. So that there is nothing to hinder a man living extravagantly and well. To the question how the educated differ from the uneducated, he replied, Exactly as horses that have been trained differ from untrained horses. One day, as he entered the house of a courtesan, one of the lads with him blushed, whereupon he remarked, It is not going in that is dangerous, but being unable to go out.
