My favorites quotes from Diogenes

“Why is it, Diogenes, that pupils leave you to go to other teachers, but rarely do they leave them to come to you?” “Because,” replied Diogenes, “one can make eunuchs out of men, but no one can make a man out of eunuchs”.

Plato considered Diogenes’ stray-dog behaviour unbecoming to one calling himself a philosopher. “You really do live up to your name” he said to him disapprovingly one day. “By the Gods, you are right for once Plato,” replied Diogenes, and then baring his teeth, he added, “But at least I’ve sunk my teeth into philosophy.”

Diogenes was asked why he always begged. “To teach people,” replied Diogenes. “Oh yes, and what do you teach?” people would ask him scornfully. “Generosity”, he replied.

Whenever people complimented Diogenes, he would slap himself hard across the face and in self-reproach would cry, “Shame! I must have done something terribly wicked!”

In the midst of serious discourse in the Craneum, Diogenes realised no one was listening. So he instead began to whistle and dance about to attract attention. Immediately, people flocked round him. Diogenes stopped and said, “You idiots, you are not interested to stop and pay attention to wisdom, yet you rush up to observe a foolish display.”

A heckler in the crowd shouted out, “My mind is not made like that, I can’t be bothered with philosophy.”

“Why do you bother to live,” Diogenes retorted, “if you can’t be bothered to live properly?”

A young man contemplating marriage sought advice from Diogenes. “Should I marry?”
“Marriage is too soon for a young man”
“Would you have me wait then until I am old.”
“Oh no, Marriage is far too late for an old man.”
“What am I to do then? I love the girl.”
“Love is a luxury no one can afford. It is for those who have nothing better to do.”
“What should we be doing then?”
“To seek freedom. But it is not possible to be free if you have a wife and children.”
“But having a wife and family is so agreeable.”
“Then you see the problem, young man. Freedom would not be so difficult to attain were prison not so sweet.”
“You mean to be free is to be alone?”
“We come into the world alone and we die alone. Why, in life, should we be any less alone?”
“To live, then, is terrible.”
“No, not to live, but to live in chains.”

Once Diogenes was going into the theatre just as everybody was coming out. When asked why he did this, he answered, “Opposition has been my manner. It is what I have been doing all my life.”

Diogenes was walking backwards across the Agora, affecting a studied indifference to all who laughed at him. Finally, when he had collected a large following he stopped and announced, “You are laughing at me walking just a little distance backwards while you all lead your entire lives arse-about.”
“And what’s more,” he asked, “can you change your way of living as easily as this?” Whereupon, he turned on his heel and walked off in normal fashion.

My favorites quotes from Aldous Huxley

That we do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
~ in Collected Essays

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
~ in Texts and Pretexts

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
~ in Vedanta for the Western World

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude

The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.