After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights.
Leonardo da VinciNo human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.
Leonardo da VinciO sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?
Leonardo da VinciIn fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . .
Leonardo da VinciThe painter who draws by practise and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same.
Leonardo da VinciExperience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Leonardo da VinciThere are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Leonardo da VinciIf you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.
Leonardo da VinciAs regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.
Leonardo da VinciThe painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.
Leonardo da VinciThirst will parch your tongue and your body will waste through lack of sleep ere you can describe in words that which painting instantly sets before the eye.
Leonardo da VinciThe first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear as a body in relief and projecting from that plane
Leonardo da VinciThe art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.
Leonardo da VinciThe men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee...gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.
Leonardo da VinciNothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgment of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.
Leonardo da VinciIt is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation.
Leonardo da VinciA man was desired to rise from bed because the sun was already up. He replied: "If I had as far to go and as much to do as he has, I should be up by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not get up yet."
Leonardo da VinciIf you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. Let us hope that.
Leonardo da VinciIt is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.
Leonardo da VinciPutting your hand into a river, you simultaneously touch the last of what is passing and the first of what is coming.
Leonardo da VinciThe knowledge of the past times and of the places of the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.
Leonardo da VinciAs every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
Leonardo da VinciThe discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.
Leonardo da VinciIt reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.
Leonardo da VinciI roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air.
Leonardo da VinciNature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.
Leonardo da VinciOysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.
Leonardo da VinciThe vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.
Leonardo da VinciIn whatever system where the weight attached to the wheel should be the cause of motion of the wheel, without any doubt the center of the gravity of the weight will stop beneath the center of its axle. No instrument devised by human ingenuity, which turns with its wheel, can remedy this effect. Oh, speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest. Go and take you place with the seekers after gold.
Leonardo da Vinci