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Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Antisthenes 11


Favorite themes with him were the following. He would prove that virtue can be taught; that nobility belongs to none other than the virtuous. 

And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. 

And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.10-11



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