Over 200 quotes by Leonardo da Vinci to spark your creativity and encourage you to think outside the box.
Leonardo da Vinci – Artist / Polymath
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, and cartographer.
He is famous for his many remarkable works of art and for his equally impressive achievements in the fields of science and engineering. He even drew conceptualized flying machines!
Born in 1452 in the town of Vinci in the Republic of Florence, Leonardo da Vinci’s legacy include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and Lady with an Ermine. He is one of the most well known figure from the Reniassance era, and his work has been revered for centuries.
As might be expected with one of the most infuential people of all time, Leonardo da Vinci quotes are plentiful and cover a wide range of topics. Here are some of our favorites:
Best Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.
– Leonardo da Vinci
As iron rusts when not used, and water gets foul from standing or turns to ice when exposed to cold, so the intellect degenerates without exercise.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test,—else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,—yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time.
– Leonardo da Vinci
His first principle stated broadly that the most useful art was the one which could most easily be communicated. Painting was communicable to all since its appeal was made to the eye. While the painter proceeded at once to the imitation of nature, the poet’s instruments were words which varied in every land. He took the Platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation, removed from truth. He called the poet a collector of other men’s wares, who decked himself in their plumage. Where poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul
– Leonardo da Vinci
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I believe man will fly and I base this assumption on the fact that God has blessed us with minds that are capable of imagining it. Anything that can be dreamt of will eventually be built. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Related: 300+ Meaningful Quotes About God And A Power Greater Than Ourselves
Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?
– Leonardo da Vinci
In Michelangelo was realized the grandeur of Italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. The keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Related: Quotes about inner beauty
The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Leonardo da Vinci
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Famous Quotes
The 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 Vinci
Titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. In his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which Italians found opportunity beyond the Alps, since in Italy it was denied them; and Titian found even Venice too narrow for the scope of his art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The draperies that clothe figures must show that they are inhabited by these figures, enveloping them neatly to show the posture and motion of such figures, and avoiding the confusion of many folds, especially over the prominent parts, so that these may be evident
– Leonardo da Vinci
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
– Leonardo da Vinci
So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of God it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Practice must always be founded on sound theory.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his mind, perhaps with no intention of publishing them to the world. But his ideal of art depended intimately, none the less, on the system he had thrown out seemingly in so haphazard a manner. His method gives to his writings their only unity. It was more than a method: it was a permanent expression of his own life, which aided him to construct a philosophy of beauty characteristic of the new age.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The knowledge of all things is possible
– Leonardo da Vinci
For I know that there are numberless people who, in order to gratify one of their appetites, would destroy God and the whole of the universe. If this art has never remained among men, although so necessary to them, it never existed, and never will exist.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy – on experience, the mistress of their Masters
– Leonardo da Vinci
Most people, if you give them a book, they sniff around on it awhile, then try to eat it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Tell me if anything was ever done… Tell me… Tell me.
– Leonardo da Vinci
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The abbreviators of works do injury to knowledge and to love. Of what value is he who, in order to abbreviate the parts of those things of which he professes to give complete knowledge, leaves out the greater part of the things of which the whole is composed? Oh human stupidity! You don’t see that you are falling into the same error as one who strips a tree of its adornment of branches full of leaves, intermingled with fragrant flowers or fruit in order to demonstrate that the tree is good for making planks
– Leonardo da Vinci
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a jud
a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
– Leonardo da Vinci
There are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses sight, hearing, and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.
– Leonardo da Vinci
People of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and made things happen.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Da Vinci Quotes
That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them.
– Leonardo da Vinci
How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.
– Leonardo da Vinci
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art
– Leonardo da Vinci
Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose
– Leonardo da Vinci
To become an artist you have to be curious.
– Leonardo da Vinci
When the fig-tree stood without fruit no one looked at it. Wishing by producing this fruit be praised by men, it was bent and broken by them.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Those who accomplish don’t sit around, hoping things will happen
– Leonardo da Vinci
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.
– Leonardo da Vinci
If the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. He must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing
– Leonardo da Vinci
He had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience.
– Leonardo da Vinci
We do not lack devices for measuring these miserable days of ours, in which it should be our pleasure that they be not frittered away without leaving behind any memory of ourselves in the mind of men.
– Leonardo da Vinci
We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Famous Quotes of Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light
– Leonardo da Vinci
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo da Vinci
In time and with water, everything changes
– Leonardo da Vinci
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Creatures shall be seen on the earth who will always be fighting one another, with the greatest losses and frequent deaths on either side. There will be no bounds to their malice; by their strong limbs the vast forests of the world shall be laid low; and when they are filled with food they shall gratify their desires by dealing out death, affliction, labour, terror, and banishment to every living thing; and then from their boundless pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the excessive weight of their limbs will hold them down. Nothing shall remain on the earth or under the earth or in the waters that shall not be pursued, disturbed, or spoiled, and that which is in one country removed into another. And their bodies shall be made the tomb and the means of transit of all the living bodies they have slain.
– Leonardo da Vinci
There is nothing in all nature without its reason, he wrote. If you know the reason, you do not need the experience.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.
– Leonardo da Vinci
If there’s no love, what then?
– Leonardo da Vinci
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
– Leonardo da Vinci
There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Everything in some way connects to everything else.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Quotations Leonardo da Vinci
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard: but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance
– Leonardo da Vinci
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience. He conceived it to be the painter’s duty not only to comment on natural phenomena as restrained by law, but to merge his very mind into that of nature by interpreting its relation with art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain
– Leonardo da Vinci
God sells us all things at the price of labor.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.
– Leonardo da Vinci
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who thinks little errs much…
– Leonardo da Vinci
Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Anyone who in discussion quotes authority uses his memory rather than his intellect.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. That mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. He denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o’-the-wisps of former ages,—alchemy and the black art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Life Quotes
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who can copy can do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It is as great an error to speak well of a worthless man as to speak ill of a good man.
– Leonardo da Vinci
My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A well-spent day brings happy sleep
– Leonardo da Vinci
The reader, at one look over this page, immediately perceives it full of different characters; but he cannot at the same moment distinguish each letter, much less can he comprehend their meaning. He must consider it word by word, and line by line, if he be desirous of forming a just notion of these characters. In like manner, if we wish to ascend to the top of an edifice, we must be content to advance step by step, otherwise we shall never be able to attain it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It’s not enough that you believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Inspiring Leonardo da Vinci Sayings
Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
While human ingenuity may devise various inventions to the same ends, it will never devise anything more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
– Leonardo da Vinci
They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness and Light, Solidity and Color, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Further than this, influenced by Platonic thought, Leonardo’s conception of painting was, as an intellectual state or condition, outwardly projected. The painter who practised his art without reasoning of its nature was like a mirror unconsciously reflecting what was before it. Although without a manual act painting could not be realized, its true problems—problems of light, of colour, pose and composition, of primitive and derivative shadow—had all to be grasped by the mind without bodily labour. Beyond this, the scientific foundation in art came through making it rest upon an accurate knowledge of nature. Even experience was only a step towards attaining this.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death
– Leonardo da Vinci
If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.
– Leonardo da Vinci
When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come
– Leonardo da Vinci
The Italian Renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed in the life-work of a single man. He represented its union of practice and theory, of thought placed in the service of action. He summed up its different aspects in his own individuality. Intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from experience, extended into every sphere. As an artist he possessed a vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty. But, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. His very limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority of art to nationality, are all characteristic of Renaissance Italy.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Animals will be seen on the earth who will always be fighting against each other with the greatest loss and frequent deaths on each side. And there will be no end to their malignity; by their strong limbs we shall see a great portion of the trees of the vast forests laid low throughout the universe; and, when they are filled with food the satisfaction of their desires will be to deal death and grief and labour and wars and fury to every living thing; and from their immoderate pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the too great weight of their limbs will keep them down. Nothing will remain on earth, or under the earth or in the waters which will not be persecuted, disturbed and spoiled, and those of one country removed into another. And their bodies will become the sepulture and means of transit of all they have killed.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Quotations by Leonardo da Vinci
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and, above all others, the most useful.
– Leonardo da Vinci
An 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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Raphael, on the other hand, found only beautiful sweetness everywhere. The tragedies of life failed to touch the young painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the sensuous beauty of the world. There was another side to the Renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet sharing in both through qualities of its own.
– Leonardo da Vinci
In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain
– Leonardo da Vinci
I expose to men the origin of their first, and perhaps second, reason for existing
– Leonardo da Vinci
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Who sows virtue reaps honour.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I know that there are numberless people who would, to satisfy a whim, destroy God and all the universe.
– Leonardo da Vinci
To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, firsthand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses such as the existence of god or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention,
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who does not value life does not deserve it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Thoughtful Words by Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death
– Leonardo da Vinci
I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Realize that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Fine gold is recognized when it is tested.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles cannot crush me…he who is fixed to a star does not change his mind
– Leonardo da Vinci
Our life is made by the death of others.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The instant does not have time; and time is made from the movement of the instant.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Although a man be not a painter, he may have just opinions of the forms of men.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Lies don’t solve problems it just make it worst …so liars beware
– Leonardo da Vinci
As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do
– Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Wisdom
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The human bird shall take his first flight,filling the words with amazement,all writings with his fame,and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Water is the driving force in nature.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
– Leonardo da Vinci
The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.
– Leonardo da Vinci
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.
– Leonardo da Vinci
If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Life well spent is long.
– Leonardo da Vinci
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils
– Leonardo da Vinci
There will come a time when men look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
– Leonardo da Vinci
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo Quotes
All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass.
– Leonardo da Vinci
You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. …And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Life without love, is no life at all
– Leonardo da Vinci
The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
– Leonardo da Vinci
No counsel is more trustworthy than that which is given upon ships that are in peril.
– Leonardo da Vinci
But the noblest painters,—Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Leonardo,—in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation’s life and civilization.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.
– Leonardo da Vinci
No human investigation can be called real knowledge if it does not pass through mathematical demonstrations; and if you say that the kinds of knowledge that begin and end in the mind have any value as truth, this cannot be conceded, but rather must be denied for many reasons, and first of all because in such mental discussions there is no experimentation, without which nothing provides certainty of itself.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares.
– Leonardo da Vinci
As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
– Leonardo da Vinci
For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Time stays long enough for those who use it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Best Quotes
To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A life without love, is no life at all
– Leonardo da Vinci
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
– Leonardo da Vinci
A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument
– Leonardo da Vinci
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Men do wrong to lament the flight of time, complaining that it passes too quickly and failing to perceive that its period is sufficiently long; but a good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes everything that is long past to appear to us to be present.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Learning never exhausts the mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Wisdom is the daughter of experience
– Leonardo da Vinci
Fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm
– Leonardo da Vinci
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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