Words matter. These are the best Leonardo da Vinci Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.
Life well spent is long.
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
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.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
Our body is dependant on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit.
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
The natural desire of good men is knowledge.
Water is the driving force of all nature.
The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
Nature never breaks her own laws.
People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
The Medici created and destroyed me.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
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.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
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.
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
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.
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
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.
The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.
The length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.
