Diogenes the main character in its sequel, "Kushiel's Justice". The character Lucy Snowe in Charlotte Brontë's novel "Villette" is given the nickname Diogenes. Diogenes also features in Part Four of Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept". He is a figure in Seamus Heaney's "The Haw Lantern". In Christopher Moore's "", one of Jesus' apostles is a devotee of Diogenes, complete with his own pack of dogs which he refers to as his own disciples. His story opens the first chapter of Dolly Freed's 1978 book "Possum Living". The dog that Paul Dombey befriends in Charles Dickens'
Diogenes expands this reading in his last course at the Collège de France, "The Courage of Truth." In this course Foucault tries to establish an alternative conception of militancy and revolution through a reading of Diogenes and Cynicism. Diogenes' name has been applied to a behavioural disorder characterised by involuntary self-neglect and hoarding. The disorder afflicts the elderly and has no relation to Diogenes' deliberate rejection of material comfort. Both in ancient and in modern times, Diogenes' personality has appealed strongly to sculptors and to painters. Ancient busts exist in the museums of the Vatican, the Louvre, and the Capitol. The