Diogenes of Sinope
Most famous of the Cynic philosophers of ancient Greece.
When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."
Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.
Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."
One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."
Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Here is Plato's man."
When the slave auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling people."
No labor, according to Diogenes, is good but that which aims at producing courage and strength of soul rather than of body.
Even bronze is aged by time, but not all the ages, Diogenes, shall destroy thy fame, since you alone did show to mortals the rule of self-sufficiency and the easiest path of life.
When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves."
Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men.
Diogenes received an invitation to dine with one whose house was splendidly furnished, in the highest order and taste, and nothing therein wanting. Diogenes, hawking, and as if about to spit, looked in all directions, and finding nothing adapted thereto, spat right in the face of the master. He, indignant, asked why he did so? "Because," Diogenes, "I saw nothing so dirty and filthy in all your house. For the walls were covered with pictures, the floors of the most precious tessellated character — and ranged with the various images of gods, and other ornamental figures."
Behaving indecently in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly."
Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.
He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast."
I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.