Reading "The Da Vinci Code"

So, I have finally started to read "The Da Vinci Code", when I picked it up in library I thought it was going to be just me satisfying my curiosity about "Da Vinci". But as I started skimming page after page I realized, that it required a more careful reading. After reading about 100 pages on the first day, when I came back home and started researching on Da Vinci a bit more. I was quite surprised that a lot of what is said in the book is indeed true, though the facts page in the book did mention it, I really did not take it with a bit of seriousness. Partially because I did not know much about this book except for some mention here and there. The book is quite critical of the _current_ practices of the Church, information about "holy grail" and also it is quite an interesting read with all the cryptic codes like "Oh! Draconian Devil". All in all a very interting read.

However, as I was researching on Leonardo, I came across texts written by him, there are about 1600 enteries in it, and it would take a _lot_ of time to go through them. FWIW as I was going through them I came across couple interesting ones.



1330.

WHY DOGS TAKE PLEASURE IN SMELLING AT EACH OTHER.

This animal has a horror of the poor, because they eat poor food,
and it loves the rich, because they have good living and especially
meat. And the excrement of animals always retains some virtue of its
origin as is shown by the faeces ...

Now dogs have so keen a smell, that they can discern by their nose
the virtue remaining in these faeces, and if they find them in the
streets, smell them and if they smell in them the virtue of meat or
of other things, they take them, and if not, they leave them: And to
return to the question, I say that if by means of this smell they
know that dog to be well fed, they respect him, because they judge
that he has a powerful and rich master; and if they discover no such
smell with the virtue of meet, they judge that dog to be of small
account and to have a poor and humble master, and therefore they
bite that dog as they would his master.



1285.

A JEST.

It was asked of a painter why, since he made such beautiful figures,
which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the
painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children
by night.


Talk about versatility ;-).