quote · Source-linked selection
Envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. Envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against God. Make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. Draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. Make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. Make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. Make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. Place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. Let her ride Death, because Envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. Make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. As soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy.
Envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. Envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against God. Make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. Draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. Make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. Make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. Make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. Place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. Let her ride Death, because Envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. Make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. As soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy.
Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval
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- Author or tradition
- Leonardo da Vinci
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1486 AD · medieval
author lifetime midpoint (1452–1519); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Thoughts on Art and Life (1906 English edition) (1906 AD)
Thoughts on Art, complete printed unit 86; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
The voice behind the words.
Represented by the complete source-numbered selections in Thoughts on Art and Life, Maurice Baring’s1906English translation, edited by Lewis Einstein. The catalogue records1452–1519; the historical collection is a selection from notebooks, not a continuous book composed by Leonardo or independent authentication of every attributed passage.
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