1162

What is life?.

Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one’s former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year—deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming—does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. And you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world.

Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.

Notebooks of Leonoardo da Vinci
XIX: Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
. . .
1142,
1143,
1144,
1145,
1146,
1147
Science, its principles and rules.
1148,
1149,
1150,
1151,
1152,
1153,
1154,
1155,
1156,
1157,
1158,
1159,
1160,
1161
What is life?.
1162,
1163
Death.
1164
How to spend life.
1165,
1166,
1167,
1168,
1169,
1170,
1171,
1172,
1173,
1174,
1175,
1176,
1177,
1178,
1179
On foolishness and ignorance.
1180,
1181,
1182
. . .