FLATTERY OR VEGETABLES?
The politic philosopher Aristippus, by paying court to the tyrant Denys, had acquired a comfortable living and looked down upon his less prosperous fellow sages with no small degree of contempt. Seeing Diogenes washing some vegetables, he said to him disdainfully: “If you would only learn to flatter King Denys you would not have to be washing lentils: Diogenes retorted in the same tone: “And you, if you had only learned to live on lentils, would not have to flatter King Denys.”
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