Thursday, January 17, 2008

leonardo da vinci the last supper

By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income, and all that. I understand you--and a very proper plan it is for a person at your time of life, with such limited means and indifferent connexions. What can _you_ want but a decent maintenance? You have not much time before you; and your relations are in no situation to do anything for you, or to mortify you by the contrast of their own wealth and consequence. Be honest and poor, by all means--but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich." ¡¡

¡¡ "Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely what I have no manner of concern with. I do not mean to be poor. Poverty is exactly what I have determined against. Honesty, in the something between, in the middle state of worldly circumstances, is all that I am anxious for your not looking down on." ¡¡¡¡ "But I do look down upon it, if it might have been higher. I must look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction."

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