He refused to accept all customs-whether religion, fashion, clothing, living room, food or courtesy. It is said that he lived in a barrel, but Gilbert Mulet assured us that it was a mistake: because it was a big urn, the kind used to bury the dead in primitive times.
He lives by begging like an Indian dervish. He preached friendship, not only between all mankind, but also between people and animals. Even when he was still alive, his whole body gathered many legends.
Everyone knows how Alexander visited him and asked him what gift he wanted. He replied, "as long as you don't block my sun." It is said that Alexander (Alexander the Conqueror) later said to his entourage, "If I am not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes."
There is nothing in Diogenes' teaching that we call "cynicism" ("cynicism")-it is just the opposite. He has a warm feeling about "virtue", and he thinks that compared with virtue, worldly wealth is insignificant. He pursues virtue and moral freedom liberated from desire: as long as you are indifferent to the wealth given by luck, you can be liberated from fear.
We can see that his theory was adopted by Stoics in this respect, but they did not follow him to reject the happiness of civilization. He believes that Prometheus was justly punished because he brought the technology that made modern life complicated and artificial to mankind. In this respect, he is similar to Taoism, Rousseau and Tolstoy, but more thorough than them.