Maxims & Morals
Prayers, Proverbs, and Reflections on Human Nature
Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
— Leonardo da Vinci, C.A. 119 v. a
Overview
Scattered throughout the notebooks are short, sharp observations on human nature, morality, and the cosmos — sometimes reverent, sometimes biting, always compressed into remarkably few words. Richter collected these under the heading "Morals" (§1132–1161), but they range from prayers to proverbs to what might be called philosophy in aphoristic form.
Prayers and Invocations
Leonardo addresses God and Nature
1132. Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
C.A. 119 v. a
1133. O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.
MS. A 24 v.
1134. Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
Forster III 43 v.
On Human Nature
Observations sharp as a surgeon's knife
1150. Every man wishes to make money to give it to the doctors, destroyers of life; they then ought to be rich.
1151. Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
1155. 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.
1159. Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.
On Knowledge and Ignorance
The relationship between seeing and understanding
1148. The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.
1160. He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
1161. He who takes the snake by the tail will presently be bitten by it. The ditch will cave in on him who digs it.
There's a directness to these maxims that is completely absent from Leonardo's scientific writing. When he's being a scientist, he qualifies everything. When he's being a moralist, he slams the hammer down. "He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." No hedging. No footnotes. -D
These fragments are some of the most quotable things Leonardo ever wrote. Some read like fortune cookies from a genius — deceptively simple on the surface, with real depth underneath. The prayer about labour is, for my money, the single best sentence Leonardo ever committed to paper. -D