When you draw a nude, sketch the whole figure and nicely fit the members to it and to each other. Even though you may only finish one portion of the drawing, just make certain that all the parts hang together, so that the study will be useful to you in the future.

To lie is vile, to tell truth is excellent, if not noble.

You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of uneven color. If you have to invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose stroke you may find every named word which you can imagine.

Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, labor in vain.

Drawing is based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Every action done by nature is done in the shortest way.