Book 6
1.4
Being reproached because his parents were not both free-born, Nor were they both wrestlers, quoth he, but yet I am a wrestler. To the question why he had but few disciples he replied, Because I use a silver rod to eject them. When he was asked why he was so bitter in reproving his pupils he replied, Physicians are just the same with their patients. One day upon seeing an adulterer running for his life he exclaimed, Poor wretch, what peril you might have escaped at the price of an obol. He used to say, as we learn from Hecato in his Anecdotes, that it is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.
1.5
Being asked what was the height of human bliss, he replied, To die happy. When a friend complained to him that he had lost his notes, You should have inscribed them, said he, on your mind instead of on paper. As iron is eaten away by rust, so, said he, the envious are consumed by their own passion. Those who would fain be immortal must, he declared, live piously and justly. States, said he, are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad. Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong.
