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.” Being asked once what advantage he had derived from philosophy, he said, “The power of associating confidently with every body.” When he was reproached for living extravagantly, he replied, “If extravagance had been a fault, it would not have had a place in the festivals of the Gods.” At another time he was asked what advantage philosophers had over other men; and he replied, “If all the laws should be abrogated, we should still live in the same manner as we do now.” Once when Dionysius asked him why the philosophers haunt the doors of the rich, but the rich do not frequent those of the philosophers, he said, “Because the first know what they want, but the second do not.”
On one occasion he was reproached by Plato for living in an expensive way; and he replied, “Does not Dionysius seem to you to be a good man?” And as he said that he did; “And yet,” said he, “he lives in a more expensive manner than I do, so that there is no impossibility in a person’s living both expensively and well at the same time.” He was asked once in what educated men are superior to uneducated men; and answered, “Just as broken horses are superior to those that are unbroken.” On another occasion he was going into the house of a courtesan, and when one of the young men who were with him blushed, he said, “It is not the going into such a house that is bad, but the not being able to go out.” Once a man proposed a riddle to him, and said, “Solve it.” “Why, you silly fellow,” said Aristippus, “do you wish me to loose what gives us