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Diogenes Quotes

Quotes tagged as "diogenes" Showing 1-27 of 27
Anthony de Mello
“The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.'

Said Diogenes, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king".”
Anthony de Mello

Diogenes of Sinope
“A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils."

Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus.”
Diogenes of Sinope

Alexander the Great
“But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”
Alexander the Great

Emmuska Orczy
“Now, when their glances met, they understood one another. The power that lay within both their souls had met, and, as it were, clasped hands. They accepted one another's sacrifice. Hers, mayhap, was the more complete of the two, because for her his absence would mean weary waiting, the dull heartache so terrible to bear.”
Baroness Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Jean le Rond d'Alembert
“Every age, and especially our own, stands in need of a Diogenes; but the difficulty is in finding men who have the courage to be one, and men who have the patience to endure one.”
Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Miscellaneous pieces in literature, history, and philosophy. By Mr. d'Alembert ... Translated from the French

Alexander the Great
“If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos�”
Alexander the Great

Emmuska Orczy
“Your conscience troubles you unnecessarily, and you see a deliberate intention in every simple act.”
Baroness Emma Orczy

Emmuska Orczy
“Tis only in the future you can prove your true worth.”
Baroness Orczy

Emmuska Orczy
“Since then her life had been peaceful and happy. She had allowed herself to be worshipped by that strangely captivating lover of hers, whose passionately willful temperament, tempered by that persistent, sunny gaiety, she had up to now only half understood.”
Baroness Orczy

Emmuska Orczy
“Hers was the perfect love that dwells on the other's happiness, and not on its own. She knew that, though for the time being he would find bliss and oblivion in her arms, he would soon repine in inactivity whilst others fought for that which he held sublime.”
Baroness Emma Orczy

David Markson
“How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masturbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one’s stomach when hungry.”
David Markson, The Last Novel

Emmuska Orczy
“She had seen them in turmoil all round her--love, hatred, vengeance, treachery--she herself practically the pivot around which they raged. Out of the deadly strife she had emerged pure, happy in the arms of the man whom her wondrous adventures as much as his brilliant personality had taught her to love.”
Baroness Orczy

Camilo Garzón
“And then comes the realization. That although a house was taken from you, you can still build a home in a wine jar.”
Camilo Garzon

Diogenes Laertius
“(Diogenes) Bir gün Olympia'dan dönüyordu; çok 첹ı var mıydı, diye sorana, "Kalabalık çoktu, ama insan azdı" diye yanıt verdi.”
Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Ludvig Holberg
“Det er jo ingen Philosophie at skabe sig til et Dyr, for at være meer end et Menneske.”
Ludvig Holberg, Epistler

“Look at your “hobophobia.�
If there is one group of people our majority population fear and despise it is rootless, nomadic individuals with no stake in society. They offend simply by “opting out”—of property, commitments, beliefs, relationships, expectations. Many such people have turned their backs on a society they don’t understand or can’t cope with. They have absconded from the pressures to compete, to perform, to sell out, to join in the dance of bureaucracy, money worries, cohabitation, housekeeping, procreation, you-name-it. Society is right to fear such people because they embody the sane rejection of many insanely onerous “civilized� values that would collapse under scrutiny. Strangely, though, society also makes an idol of Jesus, apparently a nomad who had no possessions or family ties, who walked away from a promising career in carpentry, a hobo if ever there was one. (We haven’t, however, made a popular hero out of Diogenes, the ultimate dirty Greek hobo.)”
Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“On the face of it, most people do not think of Jesus as a depressive realist. Yet the Biblical Jesus was clearly anything but a facilely happy consumerist, bureautype or bovine citizen. Rather, he espoused an ascetic lifestyle, nomadic, without possessions, possibly without sex, without career anxieties (‘consider the lilies�) and at best paying lip service to civic authorities and traditional religious institutions. Along with Diogenes, many anarchists, and latter day hip-pies, Jesus has been regarded as a model of the be-here-now philosophy, and hardly a champion of a work ethic and investment portfolio agenda. Jesus and others did not expect to find fulfilment in this world (meaning this civilisation) but looked forward to another world, or another kind of existence. Since that fantasised world has never materialised, we can only wonder about the likeness between early Christian communities and theoretical DR communities. There are certainly some overlaps but one distinctive dissimilarity: the DR has no illusory better world to look forward to, whereas the Christian had (and many Christians still have) illusions of rapture and heaven to look forward to. The key problematic here, however, for Jesus, the early Christians, anarchists, beats, hippies and DRs hoping for a DR-friendly society, is that intentional communities require some sense of overcoming adversity, having purpose, a means of functioning and maintaining morale in the medium to long-term. It is always one thing to gain identity from opposing society at large, and quite another to sustain ongoing commitment.”
Colin Feltham, Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives

“It is reported by Diogenes Laertius (VI, 37) that one day, after observing a child drinking out of his hand, Diogenes threw away the cup from his wallet, saying, "A child has given me a lesson in plainness of living." Again, according to Diogenes Laertius (VI, 40), as Diogenes was leaving the public baths, some­ body asked him whether there were many men bathing, to which he answered that there were few people but a large crowd of bathers.
In the example of the child, we have a specific behavioral response­ Diogenes throws away his own cup--and a succinct statement: "A child has given me a lesson in plainness of living." In the second example, we have a terse double reply: Few people were at the baths, but there was a large crowd of bathers. What do we learn from both examples? Plenty indeed, in fact more than we could learn from a treatise on the uselessness of most human inventions and practices, and on the brutal fact, recognized by the Cynics, that most people appear to be human but are not, that is, that most people deceive us into the belief that they are intelligent and decent, while in reality they are nothing but camouflaged rascals and ruffians, and are not therefore truly human. In the first example, Diogenes indicts much of what goes by the name of civilization, and in the second he condemns in no uncertain terms the condition in which most human beings live.”
Luis E. Navia, Classical Cynicism: A Critical Study

Diogenes of Sinope
“But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus.”
Diogenes of Sinope

“Solterón debió ser Diógenes, si no yerro, porque no se concibe que en su tonel hubiera espacio para mujer, y si con su famosa linterna buscaba un hombre honrado, con el Faro de Alejandría habría tenido que andar a cuestas en busca de una mujer de seso...”
Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, La Tertulia De Los Solterones

Ljupka Cvetanova
“Diogenes was a cynic at his best. He was in search of an honest man but not an hones woman.”
Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

William Desmond
“The Enlightenment motto was sapere aude, “dare to know�, and a favourite image to complement this brave saying was the image of Diogenes in the marketplace, with his lantern at noon. Light symbolizes knowledge and truth, of course, and in their typical simplifications, Enlightenment polemicists often castigate past generations for not consulting the “natural light of reason�, which so brightly illuminates the natural and social worlds. The Enlightenment Diogenes, on the other hand, carries his lantern into the marketplace: he tests ideas by the evidence; he is not daunted by kings, priests, and the guardians of age-old prejudice; he exposes theological humbug and unjustified feudal privilege; he is a hero of Reason; he dares to know, and he dares to tell the truth to people who do not want to know. So Cynic 貹ŧ was adapted to the agenda of a new age.”
William Desmond, Cynics

William Desmond
“Navia is one of the leading scholars of ancient Cynicism, yet for all their wide-ranging and detailed scholarship, his writings are not simply academic, but glow with the passionate conviction of a believer. Ancient Cynicism is not for Navia an object of “scientific� curiosity only. It is important for him as the closest approximation to the true ethical philosophy, and the salutary outlook that we in our technological culture now need most.
One idea that surfaces regularly in Navia’s work is the fear that contemporary human beings have become too dependent � on a system that creates and then panders to unnecessary desires and that increasingly establishes itself as the sole reality. Worse, this system of endless acquisition and consumption harbours terrible violence, both to the natural environment whose dwindling resources support it, and to human beings who are progressively dehumanized, continuously pumped with ideas, beliefs and desires from the outside, and blinded by the swirling typhos of media images, advertisements, plastic celebrities and political cant. The only solution is to wage “war� on this system, like an Antisthenes or Diogenes, and thus not in the spirit of mere renunciation. For Navia, the true Cynic criticizes out of a deep moral idealism, and the interpretation of ancient Cynicism as wholly negative is itself a sad reflection on our own moral impoverishment. We have, Navia argues through his scholarship, taken too little thought of the wisdom of the ancient Cynics: live simply, scorn unnecessary desires, do not follow the slavish crowd but speak the truth clearly in righteous war against untruth and, most of all, cultivate the virtue of philanthrōpia and learn to love others now, for it is from this that everything else will follow.”
William Desmond, Cynics

“Hänen mukaansa viisaan ihmisen tuli toimia kuin hyvän lääkärin, joka tarjoaa apuaan siellä missä sairaita on eniten, ja asettua sinne, missä typeryksiä on eniten, ja nuhdella ja moittia heitä heidän tietämättömyydestään.”
Dion Prusalainen, Onnellisuudesta

“We began this book with a passage from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, in which we accompanied Antisthenes in his descent to Hades. We now conclude this chapter with yet another passage from Lucian, in which we find Antisthenes already in Hades. Antisthenes, Diogenes, and other Cynics, Lucian tells us, persist in doing in the underworld exactly what they did while in this physical world, namely, raising hell about whatever they saw and heard. That and only that is what they are still doing after death, in fact, in so loud and harsh a fashion that those whose fate has been to share with them the same place in Hades beg the gods of the underworld to segregate the Cynics to some remote comer where their shouting cannot be heard. The gods, however, ignore this request, because they know that an important component of the punishment for those who passed their time on earth seeking pleasure, amassing fortunes, exploiting the weak and the poor, confusing people through deceptive language, and in other subhuman forms of behavior, is that they need to be reminded of how empty their lives were on earth. The Cynics wait at the gates of Hades for new arrivals, men and women who, while alive, turned themselves into less than human creatures and who now are about to suffer the unhappy consequences of their actions. As Diogenes invites Antisthenes to rush with him to the gates because new arrivals are entering, Antisthenes remarks: Let us be off at once, Diogenes, for, indeed, the spectacle will surely be an amusing one-to see them weeping and lamenting, and some begging to be let go, and some making their entrance with reluctance, and, regardless of how hard Hermes pushes them in, resisting and struggling, but all to no purpose.”
Luis E. Navia, Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright

“The solution, in part, was obvious - take a lesson from dogs and other beasts and the simplicity of their existence, and rely on nature to provide a sufficiency of life's essentials.”
Robert F. Dobbin, The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian