When people laughed at him because he walked backward beneath the portico, he said to them: "Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?"

To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."

When asked why people give to beggars but not to philosophers, he replied, 'Because they expect they may become lame and blind, but never that they will become philosophers.'

Perdiccas threatened to put him to death unless he came to him, "That's nothing wonderful," Diogenes said, "for a beetle or a tarantula would do the same."

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

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."

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."

When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.

He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo, everything belongs to the wise.'

Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.

In a shared fish, there are no bones.

Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.

He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.

Fortune is lavish with her favors, but not to be depended on. Nature on the other hand is self-sufficing, and therefore with her feebler but trustworthy [resources] she wins the greater [meed] of hope.

We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it.

The hopes of the right-minded may be realized, those of fools are impossible.

And yet it will be obvious that it is difficult to really know of what sort each thing is.

No one deserves to live who has not at least one good-man-and-true for a friend.

He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

Making money is not without its value, but nothing is baser than to make it by wrong-doing.

If any one hearken with understanding to these sayings of mine many a deed worthy of a good man shall he perform and many a foolish deed be spared.

The right-minded man, ever inclined to righteous and lawful deeds, is joyous day and night, and strong, and free from care. But if a man take no heed of the right, and leave undone the things he ought to do, then will the recollection of no one of all his transgressions bring him any joy, but only anxiety and self-reproaching.

Coition is a slight attack of apoplexy. For man gushes forth from man, and is separated by being torn apart with a kind of blow.

Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.

Now, that we do not really know of what sort each thing is, or is not, has often been shown.

Seek after the good, and with much toil shall ye find it; the evil turns up of itself without your seeking it.

'Tis a grievous thing to be subject to an inferior.

Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.

To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth.

You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.

Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep.

For a man petticoat government is the limit of insolence.

Many who have not learned wisdom live wisely, and many who do the basest deeds can make most learned speeches.

All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while-only so long as they are eating and drinking-but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

False men and shams talk big and do nothing.

'Tis well to restrain the wicked, and in any case not to join him in his wrong-doing.

Of all things the worst to teach the young is dalliance, for it is this that is the parent of those pleasures from which wickedness springs.

Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.