Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.

Fix your course on a star and you'll navigate any storm.

The moment is timeless.

When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.

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.

All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.

Anyone who invokes authors in discussion is not using his intelligence but his memory.

average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.

He who fears dangers will not perish by them.

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 painter who has no doubt about his own ability will attain very little.

I woke up only to find the rest of the world asleep.

This work should commence with the conception of man, and should describe the nature of the womb, and how the child inhabits it, and in what stage it dwells there, and the manner of its quickening and feeding, and its growth, and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another, and what thing drives it forth from the body of the mother, and for what reason it sometimes emerges from the belly of its mother before the due time.

simplicity is the best sophistication

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.

Intellectual passion dries out sensuality.

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occassion of folly.

Every obstacle is destroyed through rigor.

Make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.

Not to anticipate is already to moan.

The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.

One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.

Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body.

Truth was always but the daughter of time.

An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

But to me all sciences seem vain and full of error that are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, and do not terminate in an actual experience.

All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.

When you are alone you are all your own.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.