Sayings of Socrates 41

He was a man of great independence and dignity of character. 

Pamphila, in the seventh book of her Commentaries, tells how Alcibiades once offered him a large site on which to build a house; but he replied, "Suppose, then, I wanted shoes and you offered me a whole hide to make a pair with, would it not be ridiculous for me to take it?"  

Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, "How many things I can do without!" 

And he would continually recite the lines:

"The purple robe and silver's shine
More fits an actor's need than mine."

—Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.24-25