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Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Polymath
Born On
1452-04-15
Died On
1519-05-02
Birth Place
Anchiano, Italy
Death Place
Clos Lucé
Birth Sign
aries
Father
Ser Piero
Mother
Caterina Buti del Vacca
Nationality
Italian
Business People, Scientists, Artists & Painters, Artists, Sculptors, Architects, Renaissance Painters, Investors
Known as the greatest painter that has ever lived, Leonardo was born to a notary named Piero da Vinci, who had an extramarital affair with a peasant. Leonardo hardly shared a rapport with his mother, barring a few letters that they exchanged, but he was quite close to his father. Today, Leonardo is regarded as the "Renaissance man", as his inventions and paintings spurred the birth of the famous "Renaissance" period. He was revered for being a technological genius, whose thoughts were way ahead of their time. He conceptualized sophisticated flying machines, armored fighting vehicles, solar powered houses at a time when they were alien to mankind and illustrated them on canvas. For achieving this feat, he was regarded as one of the most diversely talented individuals of all time. His paintings such as the "Mona Lisa", "The Last Supper" and the "Vitruvian Man" amongst others, is still a global topic of discussion and debate. Studies are still being held on these paintings to decipher the encrypted details it contains. Apart from all this, Da Vinci is also known for his love for animals. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), a famous painter and a biographer, once penned a story of Da Vinci. According to him, one day the legendary painter was walking through the market stalls in Florence, Italy, when he came across a bird that was caged. Appalled by the helplessness of the bird, Da Vinci bought it from the vendor, took it home and set the bird free.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Pleasure Understanding Learning Excitement
Leonardo da Vinci

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.

Nature Knowledge Logic
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.

Death Love Smile Heart
Leonardo da Vinci

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

Heart
Leonardo da Vinci

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Learning Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

Art Body Work
Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Education
Leonardo da Vinci

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

People
Leonardo da Vinci

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Art
Leonardo da Vinci

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Nothing Power Silence
Leonardo da Vinci

Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.

Time
Leonardo da Vinci

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

Imagination
Leonardo da Vinci

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

Art Work
Leonardo da Vinci

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Nature Driving Water Pressure
Leonardo da Vinci

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Purity Water Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

Eyes
Leonardo da Vinci

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Death Life Sleep
Leonardo da Vinci

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Death Learning
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.

Time Water
Leonardo da Vinci

Our life is made by the death of others.

Death Life
Leonardo da Vinci

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

Time
Leonardo da Vinci

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Virtues Honor
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.

Practice
Leonardo da Vinci

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Leonardo da Vinci

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Wisdom
Leonardo da Vinci

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

Leonardo da Vinci

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

Darkness Light
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Life Courage Fear
Leonardo da Vinci

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

Quality Work
Leonardo da Vinci

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

Hope
Leonardo da Vinci

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Good Desire Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Work
Leonardo da Vinci

The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.

World Glory
Leonardo da Vinci

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Nature
Leonardo da Vinci

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Art Spirit Work
Leonardo da Vinci

Life well spent is long.

Life
Leonardo da Vinci

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Nature Reason Experience
Leonardo da Vinci

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Work Genius
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

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Intelligence Memory
Leonardo da Vinci

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

Praise
Leonardo da Vinci

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Darkness Truth Light
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.

Nature
Leonardo da Vinci

Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.

Body Medicine
Leonardo da Vinci

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Change Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

Darkness Light Rest
Leonardo da Vinci

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Senses Things
Leonardo da Vinci

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

Past Food Knowledge Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

Predestination
Leonardo da Vinci

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

Practice Mirror
Leonardo da Vinci

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

Water Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

Practice Science Defense Force
Leonardo da Vinci

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

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.

Desire Memory
Leonardo da Vinci

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Things
Leonardo da Vinci

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Power Experience
Leonardo da Vinci

The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height.

Leonardo da Vinci

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

Nature Law
Leonardo da Vinci

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

Reason Senses Earth
Leonardo da Vinci

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Things Truth
Leonardo da Vinci

I have wasted my hours.

Leonardo da Vinci

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

Zeal Intelligence
Leonardo da Vinci

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Perfection Work Genius
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.

Nature
Leonardo da Vinci

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

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.

Experience
Leonardo da Vinci

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

Greatness Distance
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Life Courage Vulnerability Fear
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.

Food Memory
Leonardo da Vinci

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

Viewpoint
Leonardo da Vinci

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

Love Talent
Leonardo da Vinci

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

Nothing People Eyes
Leonardo da Vinci

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

Animals Body
Leonardo da Vinci

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Mind Mirror
Leonardo da Vinci

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Order Fame
Leonardo da Vinci

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

Earth
Leonardo da Vinci

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.

Leonardo da Vinci

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

Memory Mind
Leonardo da Vinci

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

Body Spirit
Leonardo da Vinci

The Medici created and destroyed me.

Leonardo da Vinci

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work... men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Good Nature Wisdom Work
Leonardo da Vinci

Our body is dependant on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit.

Body Spirit Heaven
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.

Life Words Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

Greatness Love Knowledge
Leonardo da Vinci

The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle.

Nature Support
Leonardo da Vinci

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Death Life Food
Leonardo da Vinci

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