http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/ Day-by-day Da Vinci. Read the pages of the Notebooks by RSS, one at a time. This feed began on 17 August 2005. http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1205.html Oh! speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that
nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of
those things which you yourself devise.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1204.html To preserve Nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find
means of offence and defence, when it is assailed 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.

Against Speculators (1205. 1206).

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1203.html 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.]

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1202.html 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).

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1201.html 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.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1200.html 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.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1199.html Fear arises sooner than any thing else.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1198.html We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us ... [Footnote 2:
The rest of this passage may be rendered in various ways, but none
of them give a satisfactory meaning.]

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1197.html Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing
which scares virtue.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1196.html To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a
good man.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1195.html 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.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1194.html The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Be not false about the past.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1193.html Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom;--a
great martyr.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1192.html 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 ships which are in
peril: He may expect loss who acts on the advice of an inexperienced
youth.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1191.html Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.

Justice requires power, insight, and will; and it resembles the
queen-bee.

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.

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

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.

]]> http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/1190.html We ought not to desire the impossible. [Footnote: The writing of
this note, which is exceedingly minute, is reproduced in facsimile
on Pl. XLI No. 5 above the first diagram.

]]>