#overall it had just been a very tedious process 😭

[sukugo]

everyday i tell myself to not spend hours to make my gifs as high quality as possible bc tumblr’s gonna fuck up the quality anyways and everyday i spend hours to make my gifs as high quality as possible only for tumblr to fuck up the quality

[leonardhoee]

I was looking through Leonardo Da Vinci quotes when I stumbled upon this: “Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.”

I wanted to know what you think he means and just your opinion about it overall.

Hi! I am so sorry I have no clue how long ago you sent this ask but I was on a hiatus and just now decided to look through my ask box.😭 I hope you enjoy this because this quote is super interesting to me!

To start, I think his choice of wording is very interesting because at least to me the phrase "intellectual passion" can be interpreted in so many different ways. If we really pick it apart, the connotations surrounding the word intellectual, and the word passion are kind of opposites. The word "Intellect" makes you think of like academia and cold hard logic as a way to process the world around you right? But the word passion is more closely associated with sensuality and feeling and absorbing the world around you with kind of an unfiltered lens just because you feel so strongly for it. So if you're looking at it from a wording perspective, at first glance that quote makes no sense.

However, overall the quote actually reminds me of something I've noticed with some of my family friends who are highly "academic" for lack of a better term. It's like they've devoted themselves to intellect and basically seeing themselves as superior because of their higher education and more "intellectual careers". The thing about that is they have so many health problems and in general I have never seen them enjoy life or truly appreciate what's around them. Its like the people who look down on art or physicality because they see it as entertainment they are entitled to (or "less important" than their "intellectual jobs"). I think this might have been where Leo was trying to go with this because most of his philosophy involved being well rounded. He was physically fit, he explored spirituality and art and music and fashion.

It makes me think of the things he has said about food and how it should be enjoyed and savored rather than just seen as a required nourishment. Someone with that one track minded intellectual mindset would see it as a requirement to keep their bodies alive, but they have lost the sensual enjoyment that comes with enjoying good food. I hope that example makes sense.

"Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs." (The actual quote)

I think Leonardo was never really devoted to being known as a genius, like it was never about his reputation or doing these things solely for the sake of seeming intellectual. Honestly I don't think he cared at all about whether people thought he was a genius or not. I think the real reason he became known as a genius was because he had the freedom and the drive to quite literally do whatever he wanted. if he wanted to be a fashion designer he did that, if he wanted to engineer weapons he did that, if he wanted to paint or study astronomy or dissect cadavers stolen from graveyards he did that. There were no mental restrictions for him. Honestly this quote is funny to me because in that sense because sensuality and passion led him to intellect.

More than being a genius I think his greatest trait was just having a never ending sense of curiosity about everything. If you really think about it, he himself is the greatest example of intellectual passion in the rawest sense. Overall however, I see this more as a comment about intellectual elitism and now those people are missing out on the real beauty of life but that's just how I interpret it based on what I know about him and his beliefs. However from a different perspective I disagree with that quote because of how much of a perfect example he is of true intellectual passion. I hope that makes sense.

To be honest if people just adopted his mentality so many of us could be polymaths, it's really not that hard to do. I don't think he would want to be seen as someone that is like untouchable and above everyone. I think that's exactly what he'd hate, he loved helping people that were passionate about learning and he loved spreading his knowledge. I kind of blame the school system for why intellectual elitism is such a common thing right now and why the true meaning of intellectual passion has been lost but now I'm kind of going off on tangents about why I hate how education is being handled right now.

I'm just gonna end by putting some of my other favorite quotes here that represent his mindset and why I interpret the quote this way.

"Life without love is not life at all."

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

“For in truth great love is born of great knowledge of the thing loved.”

I could keep going with this so please reblog your thoughts!