27When Homer said that he wished war might disappear from the lives of gods and men, he forgot that without opposition ail things would cease to exist.
28Everything becomes fire, and from fire everything is born, as in the eternal exchange of money and merchandise.
29This world, which is always the same for all men, neither god nor man made: it has always been, it is, and always shall be: an everlasting fire rhythmically dying and flaring up again.
30Not enough and too much.
31Divides and rejoins, goes forward and then backward.
32The first metamorphosis of fire is to become the sea, and half of the sea becomes the earth, half the flash of lightning.
33As much earth is washed into the sea as sea-stuff dries and becomes part of the shore.
34The life of fire comes from the death of earth. The life of air comes from the death of fire. The life of water comes from the death of air. The life of earth comes from the death of water.
35Lightning is the lord of everything.
36There is a new sun for every day.
37The sun is one foot wide.
38If there were no sun, all the other stars together could not dispell the night.
39Morning is distinguished from evening by the Bear who rises and sets diametrically across from the path of Zeus of the Burning Air.
40The most beautiful order of the world is still a random gathering of things insignificant in themselves.
41All beasts are driven to pasture.
42No matter how many ways you try, you cannot find a boundary to consciousness, so deep in every direction does it extend.
43The stuff of the psyche is a smoke-like substance of finest particles that gives rise to all other things; its particles are of less mass than any other substance and it is constantly in motion: only movement can know movement.
44The psyche rises as a mist from things that are wet.
45The psyche grows according to its own law.
46A dry psyche is most skilled in intelligence and is brightest in virtue.
47The psyche lusts to be wet [and to die].
48A drunk man, staggering and mindless, must be led home by his son, so wet is his psyche.
49Water brings death to the psyche, as earth brings death to water. Yet water is born of earth, and the psyche from water.
50That delicious drink, spiced hot Pramnian wine mixed with resin, roasted barley, and grated goat’s cheese, separates in the bowl if it is not stirred.
51It is hard to withstand the heart’s desire, and it gets what it wants at the psyche’s expense.
52If every man had exactly what he wanted, he would be no better than he is now.
53Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine reveals it.
54The untrained mind shivers with excitement at everything it hears.
55The stupid are deaf to truth: they hear, but think that the wisdom of a perception always applies to someone else.
56Bigotry is the disease of the religious.
57Many people learn nothing from what they see and experience, nor do they understand what they hear explained, but imagine that they have.
58If everything were smoke, all perception would be by smell.
59In Hades psyches perceive each other by smell alone.
60The dead body is useless even as manure.
61Men are not intelligent, the gods are intelligent.
62The mind of man exists in a logical universe but is not itself logical.
63The gods’ presence in the world goes unnoticed by men who do not believe in the gods.
64Man, who is an organic continuation of the Logos, thinks he can sever that continuity and exist apart from it.
65At night we extinguish the lamp and go to sleep; at death our lamp is extinguished and we go to sleep.
66Gods become men; men become gods, the one living the death of the other, the other dying the life of the one.
[Wheelwright translates: Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals; they live in each other’s death and die in each other’s life.]
67In death men will come upon things they do not expect, things utterly unknown to the living.
68We assume a new being in death: we become protectors of the living and the dead.
69Character is fate.
70The greater the stakes, the greater the loss. [The more one puts oneself at the mercy of chance, the more chance will involve one in the laws of necessity and inevitability.]
71Justice stalks the liar and the false witness.
72Fire catches up with everything, in time.
73How can you hide from what never goes away?
74There are gods here, too.
75They pray to statues of gods and heroes much as they would gossip with the wall of a house, understanding so little of gods and heroes.
76Paraders by night, magicians, Bacchantes, leapers to the flute and drum, initiates in the Mysteries — what men call the Mysteries are unholy disturbances of the peace.
77Their pompous hymns and phallic songs would be obscene if we did not understand that they are the rites of Dionysos. And Dionysos, through whom they go into a trance and speak in tongues and for whom they beat the drum, do they realize that he is the same god as Hades, Lord of the Dead?
78They cleanse themselves with blood: as if a man fallen into the pigsty should wash himself with slop. To one who does not know what’s happening, the religious man at his rites seems to be a man who has lost his mind.
79There is madness in the Sibyl’s voice, her words are gloomy, ugly, and rough, but they are true for a thousand years, because a god speaks through her.
80All men think.
81All men should speak clearly and logically, and thus share rational discourse and have a body of thought in common, as the people of a city are all under the same laws. The laws of men derive from the divine law, which is whole and single, which penetrates as it will to satisfy human purposes, but is mightier than any law known to men.
82Defend the law as you would the city wall.
83Law gives the people a single will to obey.
84One man, to my way of thinking, is worth ten thousand, if he’s the best of his kind.
85The best of men see only one thing worth having: undying fame. They prefer fame to wealth. The majority of men graze like cattle.
86Those killed by Ares are honored by gods and men.
87The man of greatest reputation knows how to defend a reputation.
88Extinguish pride as quickly as you would a fire.
89To do the same thing over and over is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.
90Dogs bark at strangers.
91What do they have for intellect, for common sense, who believe the myths of public singers and flock with the crowd as if public opinion were a teacher, forgetting that the many are bad, the few are good [there are many bad people, few good ones]?
92All men are equally mystified by unaccountable evidence, even Homer, wisest of the Greeks. He was mystified by children catching lice. He heard them say, What we have found and caught we throw away; what we have not found and caught we still have.
93Homer should be thrown out of the games and whipped, and Archilochos with him.
94Good days and bad days, says Hesiod, forgetting that all days are alike.
95The Ephesians might as well all hang themselves and let the city be governed by children. They have banished Hermadoros, best of their citizens, because they cannot abide to have among them a man so much better than they are.
96Ephesians, be rich! I cannot wish you worse.
97Life is bitter and fatal, yet men cherish it and beget children to suffer the same fate.
98Opposites cooperate. The beautifullest harmonies come from opposition. All things repel each other.
99We know health by illness, good by evil, satisfaction by hunger, leisure by fatigue.
100Except for what things would we never have hear
d the word justice?
101Sea water is both fresh and foul: excellent for fish, poison to men.
102Asses would rather have hay than gold.
103Pigs wash in mud, chickens in dust.
104The handsomest ape is uglier than the ugliest man. The wisest man is less wise, less beautiful than a god: the distance from ape to man is that from man to god.
105A boy is to a man as a man is to a god.
106To God all is beautiful, good, and as it should be. Man must see things as either good or bad.
107Having cut, burned and poisoned the sick, the doctor then submits his bill.
108The same road goes both up and down.
109The beginning of a circle is also its end.
110The river we stepped into is not the river in which we stand.
111Curled wool, straight thread.
112Joints are and are not parts of the body. They cooperate through opposition, and make a harmony of separate forces. Wholeness arises from distinct particulars; distinct particulars occur in wholeness.
113To live is to die, to be awake is to sleep, to be young is to be old, for the one flows into the other, and the process is capable of being reversed.
114Hesiod, so wise a teacher, did not see that night and day are the same.
115A bow is alive only when it kills.
116The unseen design of things is more harmonious than the seen.
117We do not notice how opposing forces agree. Look at the bow and the lyre.
118Not I but the world says it: All is one.
119Wisdom alone is whole, and is both willing and unwilling to be named Zeus.
120Wisdom is whole: the knowledge of how things are plotted in their courses by all other things.
121God is day night winter summer war peace enough too little, but disguised in each and known in each by a separate flavor.
122The sun will never change the rhythm of its motion. If it did, the Erinyes, agents of justice, would bring it to trial.
123All things come in seasons.
124Even sleeping men are doing the world’s business and helping it along.
Diogenes
1I have come to debase the coinage.
2All things belong to the gods. Friends own things in common. Good men are friends of the gods. All things belong to the good.
3Men nowhere, but real boys at Sparta.
4I am a yapping Maltese lap dog when hungry, a Molossian wolfhound when fed, breeds tedious to hunt with but useful for guarding the house and the sheepfold.
5No one can live with me as a companion: it would be too inconvenient.
6It is absurd to bring back a runaway slave. If a slave can survive without a master, is it not awful to admit that the master cannot live without the slave?
7I am a citizen of the world.
8We are not as hardy, free, or accomplished as animals.
9If only I could free myself from hunger as easily as from desire.
10Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?
11Demosthenes is a Scythian in his speeches and a gentleman on the battlefield.
12The darkest place in the tavern is the most conspicuous.
13I am Athens’ one free man.
14The porches and streets of Athens were built for me as a place to live.
15I learned from the mice how to get along: no rent, no taxes, no grocery bill.
16Plato winces when I track dust across his rugs: he knows that I’m walking on his vanity.
17How proud you are of not being proud, Plato says, and I reply that there is pride and pride.
18When I die, throw me to the wolves. I’m used to it.
19A man keeps and feeds a lion. The lion owns a man.
20The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.
21Everything is of one substance. It is custom, not reason, that sets the temple apart from the house, mutton from human flesh for the table, bread from vegetable, vegetable from meat.
22Antisthenes made me an exiled beggar dressed in rags: wise, independent, and content.
23It is luckier to be a Megarian’s ram than his son.
24Before begging it is useful to practice on statues.
25When the Sinopians ostracized me from Pontos, they condemned themselves to a life without me.
26Aristotle dines at King Philip’s convenience, Diogenes at his own.
27When Plato said that if I’d gone to the Sicilian court as I was invited, I wouldn’t have to wash lettuce for a living, I replied that if he washed lettuce for a living he wouldn’t have had to go to the Sicilian court.
28Philosophy can turn a young man from the love of a beautiful body to the love of a beautiful mind.
29When I was captured behind the Macedonian lines and taken before Philip as a spy, I said that I’d only come to see how big a fool a king can be.
30A. I am Alexander the Great.
B. I am Diogenes, the dog.
A. The dog?
B. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite louts.
A. What can I do for you?
B. Stand out of my light.
31To live is not itself an evil, as has been claimed, but to lead a worthless life is.
32They laugh at me, but I’m not laughed at.
33Great crowds at the Olympic games, but not of people.
34The Shahinshah of Persia moves in pomp from Susa in the spring, from Babylon in the winter, from Media in the summer, and Diogenes walks every year from Athens to Corinth, and back again from Corinth to Athens.
35I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.
36Go into any whorehouse and learn the worthlessness of the expensive.
37We can only explain you, young man, by assuming that your father was drunk the night he begot you.
38Can you believe that Pataikion the thief will fare better in Elysion because of his initiation into the Mysteries than Epameinondas the Pythagorean?
39One wrong will not balance another: to be honorable and just is our only defense against men without honor or justice.
40To be saved from folly you need either kind friends or fierce enemies.
41Watching a mouse can cure you of jealousy of others’ good fortune.
42There is no stick hard enough to drive me away from a man from whom I can learn something.
43Eukleidos’ lectures limp and sprawl, Plato’s are tedious, tragedies are quarrels before an audience, and politicians are magnified butlers.
44Watch a doctor, philosopher, or helmsman, and you will conclude that man is the most intelligent of the animals, but then, regard the psychiatrist and the astrologer and their clients, and those who think they are superior because they are rich. Can creation display a greater fool than man?
45Reason or a halter.
46Why Syrakousa, friend Plato? Are not the olives in Attika just as toothsome?
47Plato’s philosophy is an endless conversation.
48Beg a cup of wine from Plato and he will send you a whole jar. He does not give as he is asked, nor answer as he is questioned.
49Share a dish of dried figs with Plato and he will take them all.
50Grammarians without any character at all lecture us on that of Odysseus.
51The contest that should be for truth and virtue is for sway and belongings instead.
52Happy the man who thinks to marry and changes his mind, who plans a voyage he does not take, who runs for office but withdraws his name, who wants to belong to the circle of an influential man, but is excluded.
53A friend’s hand is open.
54Bury me prone: I have always faced the other way.
55Raising sons: teach them poetry, history, and philosophy. Geometry and music are not essential, and can be learned later. Teach them to ride a horse, to shoot a true bow, to master the slingshot and javelin. At the gymnasium they should exercise only so much as gives them a good color and a trim body. Teach them to wait upon themselves at home
, and to enjoy ordinary food, and to drink water rather than wine. Crop their hair close. No ornaments. Have them wear a thin smock, go barefoot, be silent, and never gawk at people on the street.
56In the rich man’s house there is no place to spit but in his face.
57The luxurious have made frugality an affliction.
58I’m turning that invitation down: the last time I was there, they were not thankful enough that I came.
59When some strangers to Athens asked me to show them Demosthenes, I gave them the finger, so that they would know what it felt like to meet him.
60A choirmaster pitches the note higher than he knows the choristers can manage. So do I.
61Go about with your middle finger up and people will say you’re daft; go about with your little finger out, and they will cultivate your acquaintance.
62For three thousand drachmas you can get a statue, for two coppers a quart of barley.
63Masters should obey their slaves; patients, their doctors; rivers, their banks.
64Against fate I put courage; against custom, nature; against passion, reason.
65Toadying extends even to Diogenes, I say to the mice who nibble my crumbs.
66Even with a lamp in broad daylight I cannot find an honest man.
67There are gods. How else explain people like Lysias the apothecary on whom the gods have so obviously turned their backs?
68You can no more improve yourself by sacrificing at the altar than you can correct your grammar.
69We are more curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when we are awake.
70Pilfering Treasury property is particularly dangerous: big thieves are ruthless in punishing little thieves.
71It is not for charity but my salary that I beg in the streets.
72Had to lift its skirt to see whether man or woman had stopped me to talk philosophy.
73I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?
74Pitching heeltaps: the better you are at it, the worse for you.
75You know the kind of luckless folk we call triple wretches. Well, these professors and others of that kidney who long to be known as famous lecturers are triple Greeks.
76The ignorant rich, sheep with golden fleeces.
77The athlete’s brain, like his body, is as strong as that of a bull.
78Love of money is the marketplace for every evil.
The Guy Davenport Reader Page 37