The great artist takes what he needs.

All color is no color.

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.

Art...must do something more than give pleasure: it should relate to our own life so as to increase our energy of spirit.

In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.

Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.

All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.