Diogenes Laertius
Native of Laerte in Cilicia, was a biographer of ancient Greek philosophers.
There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from customs is the unwritten law.
Asked from what country he came, he replied, "I am a citizen of the world."
Pittacus said that half was more than the whole.
In the time of Pythagoras that proverbial phrase Ipse dixit was introduced into ordinary life.
The chief good he has defined to be the exercise of virtue in a perfect life.
They also say that God is an animal immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil, having a foreknowledge of the universe and of all that is in the universe; however, that he has not the figure of a man; and that he is the creator of the universe, and as it were the Father of all things in common, and that a portion of him pervades everything.
Apollodorus says, "If any one were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty."
He used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter; 18 but others say that it was Diogenes who gave this description of it, while Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God"; that Socrates called it "a short-lived tyranny"; Theophrastus, "a silent deceit"; Theocritus, "an ivory mischief"; Carneades, "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards".
The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other.
Fortune is unstable, while our will is free.
He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin.
Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, "Courage, my boy! that is the complexion of virtue."
Bion used to say that the way to the shades below was easy; he could go there with his eyes shut.
Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, "The descent to Hades is the same from every place."
Of a rich man who was niggardly he said, "That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him."
If appearances are deceitful, then they do not deserve any confidence when they assert what appears to them to be true.
Bion insisted on the principle that "The property of friends is common."
Antisthenes used to say that envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is by rust.
The chief good is the suspension of the judgment, which tranquillity of mind follows like its shadow.
Very late in life, when he was studying geometry, some one said to Lacydes, "Is it then a time for you to be learning now?" "If it is not," he replied, "when will it be?"