The Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
The Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.
The natural desire of good men is knowledge.
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
Life well spent is long.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
Nature never breaks her own laws.
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.
The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height.
The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.
For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work... men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.
The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
Water is the driving force of all nature.
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
Our life is made by the death of others.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.