Fol. 11r

This page interrupts the treatise on flight with a pause for reflection on what is important in life. Leonardo entrusts to his notebook solemn words on the luminous and illuminating power of truth, in contrast to lies.

«Senza dubbio vi è tale distanza fra la verità e la bugia quanta ne passa fra la luce e le tenebre, ed è la verità di tale eccellenza che anche quando investe umili e bassi argomenti vale senza paragone di più che le incertezze e le bugie applicate ai grandi e altissimi discorsi, perché anche se la nostra mente ha la bugia come quinto elemento, rimane il fatto che la verità delle cose è di sommo nutrimento per gli intelletti fini…»
(Without a doubt there is as great a distance between the truth and the lie as there is between the light and darkness, and the truth is of such excellence that when it invests humble and low arguments it is worth incomparably more than the uncertainties and lies applied to the great and highest discourses, so that even if our mind has the lie as its fifth element [quintessence], the fact remains that the truth of things is the highest nutriment for refined minds.)

NOTE. For each page of Leonardo’s Codex we provide a brief summary, with the quotation of one that page’s most significant passages edited in modern Italian, with an English translation.

translation by Kim Williams