He used to call the orators, and all those who speak for fame τρισάνθρωποι (thrice men), instead of τρισάθλιοι (thrice miserable). He said that a rich but ignorant man, was like a sheep with a golden fleece. When he saw a notice on the house of a profligate man, “To be sold.” “I knew,” said he, “that you who are so incessantly drunk, would soon vomit up your owner.” To a young man, who was complaining of the number of people who sought his acquaintance, he said, “Do not make such a parade of your vanity.”
Having been in a very dirty bath, he said, “I wonder where the people, who bathe here, clean themselves.” When all the company was blaming an indifferent harp-player, he alone praised him, and being asked why he did so, he said, “Because, though he is such as he is, he plays the harp and does not steal.” He saluted a harp player who was always left alone by his hearers, with, “Good morning, cock;” and when the man asked him, “Why so?” he said, “Because you, when you sing, make every one get up.” When a young man was one day making a display of himself, he, having filled the bosom of his robe with lupins, began to eat them; and when the multitude looked at him, he said, “that he marvelled at their leaving the young man to look at him.” And when a man, who was very superstitious, said to him, “With one blow I will break your head;” “And I,” he replied, “with one sneeze will make you tremble.” When Hegesias entreated him to lend him one of his books, he said, “You are a silly fellow, Hegesias, for you will not take painted figs, but real ones; and yet you overlook the genuine practice of virtue, and seek for what is merely written.” A man once reproached him with his banishment, and his answer was, “You wretched man, that is what made me a philosopher.” And when, on another occasion, some one said to him, “The people of Sinope condemned you to banishment,” he replied, “And I condemned them to remain where they were.” Once he saw a man who had been victor at the Olympic games, feeding (νέμοντα) sheep, and he said to him, “You have soon come across my friend from the Olympic games, to the Nemean.” When he was asked why athletes are insensible to pain, he said, “Because they are built up of pork and beef.”