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What good is a house? No one needs privacy; natural acts are not shameful; we all do the same things, and need not hide them. No one needs beds and chairs and such furniture: the animals live healthy lives and sleep on the ground. All we require, since nature did not dress us properly, is one garment to keep us warm, and some shelter from rain and wind. So he had one blanket—to dress him in the daytime and cover him at night—and he slept in a cask. His name was Diogenes. He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism (doggishness); he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city of Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them.
房子有什么用？没有人需要私人空间，自然的行为并不可耻；我们都干着同样的事，不需要把它们隐藏起来。没人需要床、椅子之类的家具：动物睡在地上也过着健康的生活。因为大自然没有给我们配备合适的衣服，因此我们只需要一件衣服来抵御严寒，以及一个借以遮风避雨的住处。所以他只有一张毯子——白天披在身上，晚上盖在身上——而他就睡在一个桶里。他叫第欧根尼，是被称之为“犬儒主义哲学”的奠基人。他把自己一生的大多数时间花在了希腊科林斯这座富裕、懒惰和腐败的城市中，嘲笑和讥讽那里的人，偶尔也改造一两个，使他们改变原来的信仰。
His home was not a barrel made of wood; too expensive. It was a storage jar made of earthenware, no doubt discarded because a break had made it useless. He was not the first to inhabit such a thing. But he was the first who ever did so by choice, out of principle.
他的家还不是一个木桶，那太贵了，那是一个泥土做的储物缸。这是一个破桶，显然是人们弃之不用的。住这样的地方他并不是第一个，但他确实是第一个自愿这么做的人，这是出于他自己做人的原则而已。
Diogenes was not a lunatic. He was a philosopher who wrote plays and poems and essays expounding his doctrine; he talked to those who cared to listen; he had pupils who admired him. But he taught chiefly by example. All should live naturally, he said, for what is natural is normal and cannot possibly be evil or shameful.
第欧根尼并不是疯子。他是一个哲学家，写过很多的剧本、诗歌和散文来阐述自己的主张，谁愿意听他的主张，他就讲给谁听。他有敬仰他的弟子。但他主要以自己的行为来教育学生。他说，所有人都应当活得自然些，因为自然的东西才是正常的，而且不可能变得邪恶或可耻。
