Wikiquote:Transwiki/Anecdotes about Diogenes preserved by Seneca

• “How, I ask, can you consistently admire both Diogenes and Daedalus? Which of these two seems to you a wise man - the one who devised the saw, or the one who, on seeing a boy drink water from the hollow of his hand, forthwith took his cup from his wallet and broke it, upbraiding himself with these words: "Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!" and then curled himself up in his tub and lay down to sleep?” — Seneca, Epistles, xc. 14

• “I must be worsted in a contest of benefits with Socrates, or with Diogenes, who walked naked through the treasures of Macedonia, treading the king's wealth under his feet. In good sooth, he must then rightly have seemed, both to himself and to all others whose eyes were keen enough to perceive the real truth, to be superior even to him at whose feet all the world lay. He was far more powerful, far richer even than Alexander, who then possessed everything; for there was more that Diogenes could refuse to receive than that Alexander was able to give.” — Seneca, On Benefits, v. 4

• “Diogenes, by whom Alexander was certainly surpassed; for was he not surpassed on the day when, swelling as he was beyond the limits of merely human pride, he beheld one to whom he could give nothing, from whom he could take nothing?” — Seneca, On Benefits, v. 6

• “But the only slave Diogenes had ran away from him once, and, when he was pointed out to him, he did not think it worth while to fetch him back. "It would be a shame," he said, "if Diogenes is not able to live without Manes, when Manes is able to live without Diogenes."” — Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 8.

References

• Basore, John W. (1932), Lucius Annasus Seneca. Moral Essays, Loeb Classical Library, II, Harvard