Leon Battista Alberti Quotes

I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind.

The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.

A common error of ignorance is to maintain that what one does not know does not exist.

Painting is possessed of divine power, for not only does it make the absent present, but also makes the dead almost alive.

As ability goes, so goes our fortune.

Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.

It is very rarely granted even to Nature herself to produce anything absolutely perfect in every part.

No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.

A person can do anything if they only will it strongly enough.

We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.

Men are themselves the source of their own fortune and misfortune.

Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.

The Arts are learnt by reason and method; they are mastered by practice.

Beauty is the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

A man can do all things if he will.

What is painting but the act of embracing, by means of art, the surface of the pool?

I will never tire of recommending the custom, practiced by the best architects, of preparing not only drawings and sketches, but also models of wood or any other material. These... enable us to examine... the work as a whole... and, before continuing any further, to estimate the likely trouble and expense.

... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.

Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.

The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.

Buildings have been made because of man.

The function of the painter is to render... the visible surface so that at a certain distance... and position it appears... like the body itself.

The picture will have charm when each color is very unlike the one next to it.