Seeing that I cannot choose any subject of great utility or pleasure, because my predecessors have already taken as their own…

“Seeing that I cannot choose any subject of great utility or pleasure, because my predecessors have already taken as their own all useful and necessary themes, I will do like one who, because of his poverty, is the last to arrive at the fair, and not being able otherwise to provide for himself, chooses all the things which others have already looked over and not taken, but refused as being of little value. With these despised and rejected wares — the leavings of many buyers — I will load my modest pack, and therewith take my course, distributing, not indeed amid the great cities, but among the mean hamlets, and taking such reward as befits the things I offer.”

–Da Vinci, Codice Atlantico 119 v. a, in The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Edward MacCurdy (trans.), Vol 1, Oxford: Jonathan Cape, 1945, p. 61 (viadearyesno)