The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Part 100

He who takes the snake by the tail will presently be bitten by it.

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.

1192.

The man who does not restrain wantonness, allies himself with beasts.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

He who thinks little, errs much.

It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.

No counsel is more loyal than that given on s.h.i.+ps which are in peril: He may expect loss who acts on the advice of an inexperienced youth.

1193.

Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom;-a great martyr.

1194.

The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingrat.i.tude.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Be not false about the past.

1195.

A SIMILE FOR PATIENCE.

Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.

1196.

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

1197.

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.

1198.

We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us ... [Footnote 2: The rest of this pa.s.sage may be rendered in various ways, but none of them give a satisfactory meaning.]

1199.

Fear arises sooner than any thing else.

1200.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.

Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.

He who walks straight rarely falls.

It is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, I mean, if you do not understand the matter well.

It is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do not understand.

1201.

Words which do not satisfy the ear of the hearer weary him or vex him, and the symptoms of this you will often see in such hearers in their frequent yawns; you therefore, who speak before men whose good will you desire, when you see such an excess of fatigue, abridge your speech, or change your discourse; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you desire, you will get dislike and hostility.

And if you would see in what a man takes pleasure, without hearing him speak, change the subject of your discourse in talking to him, and when you presently see him intent, without yawning or wrinkling his brow or other actions of various kinds, you may be certain that the matter of which you are speaking is such as is agreeable to him &c.

1202.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensible objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.

When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there.

Politics (1203. 1204).

1203.

There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.

All communities obey and are led by their magnates, and these magnates ally themselves with the lords and subjugate them in two ways: either by consanguinity, or by fortune; by consanguinity, when their children are, as it were, hostages, and a security and pledge of their suspected fidelity; by property, when you make each of these build a house or two inside your city which may yield some revenue and he shall have...; 10 towns, five thousand houses with thirty thousand inhabitants, and you will disperse this great congregation of people which stand like goats one behind the other, filling every place with fetid smells and sowing seeds of pestilence and death;

And the city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its aggrandizement.

[Footnote: These notes were possibly written in preparation for a letter. The meaning is obscure.]

1204.

To preserve Nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find means of offence and defence, when it is a.s.sailed by ambitious tyrants, and first I will speak of the situation of the walls, and also I shall show how communities can maintain their good and just Lords.

[Footnote: Compare No. 1266.]

III.

POLEMICS.-SPECULATION.