Diogenes Laërtius
15 quotes
Biography
Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving work, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, remains a primary source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy.
"Step out of my sunlight."
"Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance and shimmy, and you've got an audience!"
"Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words."
"The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other."
"Once Diogenes, who was washing vegetables, ridiculed him as he passed by, and said, "If you had learnt to eat these vegetables, you would not have been a slave in the palace of a tyrant." But Aristippus replied, "And you, if you had known how to behave among men, would not have been washing vegetables.""
"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."
"Old age is the harbor of all ills."
"Wealth is the sinews of affairs."
"The road to Hades is the easiest to travel."
"He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him."
"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more."
"Just step aside for me to enjoy the sunshine."
"Time is the most valuable thing that a man can spend."
"We are more curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when awake."
"As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life."