Da Vinci, Leonardo (Leonardo Da Vinci)

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

Our life is made by the death of others.
-- Leonardo da Vinci

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Seeing that I cannot find any object of great utility or pleasure, because the men who have come before me have taken for their own all useful and necessary themes, I will do like one who because of his poverty, is the last to arrive at the fair, and not being otherwise able to provide for himself, takes all the things which others have seen and not taken but refused as being of little value.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

To me it seems that all sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, mother of all certainty... that is to say, that do not at their origin, middle or end, pass through any of the five senses.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O thou that sleepest, what is sleep? Sleep is an image of death. Oh why not let your bowk be such that after death you become an image of immortality?

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in apparance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hand; and these are of such excellence that they present a proportioned and harmonious view of the whole, that can be simultaneously, at one glance...

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Such a science is in the same relation to divine nature as its works to the works of nature.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

[The artist] should not seek distraction in company but live a life of complete harmony with the natural world and in the process to penetrate the outer forms of nature and discover something of its inner core.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Behold here O reader! A thing concerning... those things, which can at any time be clearly known by experience, remained for many ages unknown or falsely understood. The eye, whose function we so certainly know by experience, has, down to my own time, been defined by an infinite nymber of authors as one thing; but I find, by experience, that it is quite another.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Every solid body is surrounded and clothed with light and darkness. You will get only a poor perception of the details of a body when the part that you see is all in shadow, or all illuminated.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

The more brilliant the light of a luminous body, the deeper the shadows cast by the illuminated object.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

In an object in light and shade, the side which faces the light transmits the images of its details more distinctly and immediately to the eye than the side which in shadow.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Among objects of equal size, that which is most remote from the eye will look the smallest.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Linear perspective deals with the actions of the lines of sight, in proving by measurement how much smaller is a second object than the first, and how much the third is smaller than the second and so on by degrees to the end of things visible.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If in painting you wish to represent one [object] more remote than another you must make the atmosphere somewhat dense.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Of several bodies all equally larger and distant, that most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Of several bodies of equal size and tone, that which is farthest will look lightest and smallest.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Of shadows of equal depth, those nearest the eye will look least deep.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Man is the measure of all things...Every part of the whole must be in proportion to the whole... I would have the same thing understood as applying to all animals and plants.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He is a poor painter who does not excel his master.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

The painter ought to be solitary and consider what he sees, discussing it with himself in order to select the most excellent parts of whatever he sees.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

While you are alone you are entirely on your own; and if you have but one companion you are but half your own, or even less in proportion to the indiscretion of his conduct.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

As you walk through the fields turn your attention to the various objects and look now at this thing and now at collecting a store of divers[e] facts.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

The painter who draws by practice and judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without knowledge of the same.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Good judgement proceeds from clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes from reason derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the daughters of sound experience - the common mother of all the sciences and arts.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Practice should always be based on sound theory, of which perspective is the guide and gateway, and without it nothing can be done well in any kind of painting.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

...we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that it's flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa and its blood the springs of water.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

You should go about and often as you go for walks observe... the actions of the men themselves and of the bystanders.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

We know well that errors are better recognised in the works of others than in our own; and often by reproving little faults in others, we may ignore great ones in ourselves.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Sitting too close at work may greatly deceive you.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because when you come back to it you are a better judge.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is good to retire a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the lack of harmony and proportion in the limbs and colours of the objects.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I wish to work miracles; it may be that I shall possess less than other men of peaceful lives, or those who want to grow rich in a day. I may live for a long time in great poverty, as always happens and to all eternity will happen, to alchemists, the would-be creators of gold and silver, and to engineers who would have dead water stir itself into life and perpetual motion, and to those supreme fools, the necromancer and the enchanter.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Experience does not feed investigators on dreams, but always proceeds from accurately determined first principles, step by step in true sequence to the end.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

There is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those which are connected with the mathematical sciences.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Here you must proceed methodically; that is you must distinguish between the various parts of the proposition so that there may be no confusion and you may be well understood.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

See to it that the examples and proofs that are given in this work are defined before you cite them.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Before you base a law on this case test it two or three times and see whether the tests produce the same effects.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

This experiment should be made many times so that no accident may occur to hinder or falsify this proof, for the experiment may be false whether it deceived the investigator or not.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Mechanics is the paradise of mathematical science, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nature begins with the cause and ends with the experience; we must follow the opposite course, namely, begin with the experience, and by means of it, investigate the cause.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nature does not break her law; Nature is constrained by the logical necessity of her law which is inherent in her.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Necessity is the theme and inventor of nature, its eternal law and curb.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is born in violence and dies in liberty; and the greater it is the more quickly it is consumed.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Force is a spiritual essence which by accidental violence is united to weighty bodies, restraining them from following their natural inclination...

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It drives away in fury whatever opposes its destruction. It desires to conquer and slay the cause of its opposition, and in conquering destroys itself.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Without force nothing moves.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A point has no part; a line is the transit of a point; points are boundaries of a line. An instant has no time. Time is made of movements of the instant, and instants are the boundaries of time.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All our knowledge has its foundation in our senses.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

What is fair in men passes away, but not so in art.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Oh wonderful science that can presserve the transient beauty of mortals and endow it with a permanence greater than the works of nature, for these are subject to the continual change of time which leads them to inevitable old age.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

What is fair in men passes away, but not so in art.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

The work is the first thing born of union; if the thing that is loved is base then the lover becomes base. When the thing taken into union is in harmony with that which receives it, there follow delight, pleasure and satisfaction.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Men out of fear shall pursue the things they most fear: that is they will be miserable lest they should fall into misery.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A malignant and terrifying thing will spread so much fear among men that in their panic desire to flee from it, they will hasten to increase its boundless power.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Truth is so excellent that if it praises but small things they become noble.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Vain splendour takes from us the splendour of true being.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing is hidden under the sun.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He turns not back who is bound to a star.
-- Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. A light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by mists.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A man was desired to rise from bed, because the sun was already risen. To which he replied: "If I had as far to go, and as much to do as he has, I should be risen by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not rise yet."
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A picture or representation of human figures, ought to be done in such a way as that the spectator may easily recognise, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds. Thus, if you have to represent a man of noble character in the act of speaking, let his gestures be such as naturally accompany good words; and, in the same way, if you wish to depict a man of a brutal nature, give him fierce movements; as with his arms flung out towards the listener, and his head and breast thrust forward beyond his feet, as if following the speaker's hands. Thus it is with a deaf and dumb person who, when he sees two men in conversation— although he is deprived of hearing— can nevertheless understand, from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, the nature of their discussion.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A point is not part of a line.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A shadow may be infinitely dark, and also of infinite degrees of absence of darkness. 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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the object than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and so illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. The image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. All the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

All the rays which convey the images of objects through the air are straight lines. Hence, if the images of very large bodies have to pass through very small holes, and beyond these holes recover their large size, the lines must necessarily intersect.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension among the things of Nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons Light chiefly delights the beholder; and among the great features of Mathematics the certainty of its demonstrations is what preeminently (tends to) elevate the mind of the investigator. Perspective, therefore, must be preferred to all the discourses and systems of human learning. In this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.
-- 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

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Be not false about the past.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being .... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that... O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to God and tend to hell.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Drawing is based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye. And this function simply consists in receiving in a pyramid the forms and colours of all the objects placed before it. I say in a pyramid, because there is no object so small that it will not be larger than the spot where these pyramids are received into the eye. Therefore, if you extend the lines from the edges of each body as they converge you will bring them to a single point, and necessarily the said lines must form a pyramid.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Every body in light and shade fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself; and these, by infinite pyramids diffused in the air, represent this body throughout space and on every side.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Every instrument requires to be made by experience.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely divisible.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. Men wrongly complain of Experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set Experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. Men are unjust in complaining of innocent Experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence.
-- 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

Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. Hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fear arises sooner than anything else.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Fire may be represented as the destroyer of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences [or subtle things].
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who offends others, does not secure himself.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who thinks little, errs much.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who walks straight rarely falls.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity— by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles...
-- 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

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I am still hopeful. A falcon, Time. But the coincidence is probably accidental.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I ask how far away the eye can discern a non-luminous body, as, for instance, a mountain. It will be very plainly visible if the sun is behind it; and could be seen at a greater or less distance according to the sun's place in the sky.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I find that any luminous body when seen through a dense and thick mist diminishes in proportion to its distance from the eye. Thus it is with the sun by day, as well as the moon and the other eternal lights by night. And when the air is clear, these luminaries appear larger in proportion as they are farther from the eye.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and I have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I know that many will call this useless work.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I myself have proved it to be of no small use, when in bed in the dark, to recall in fancy the external details of forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by subtle speculation; and this is certainly an admirable exercise, and useful for impressing things on the memory.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If any man could have discovered the utmost powers of the cannon, in all its various forms and have given such a secret to the Romans, with what rapidity would they have conquered every country and have vanquished every army, and what reward could have been great enough for such a service! Archimedes indeed, although he had greatly damaged the Romans in the siege of Syracuse, nevertheless did not fail of being offered great rewards from these very Romans; and when Syracuse was taken, diligent search was made for Archimedes; and he being found dead greater lamentation was made for him by the Senate and people of Rome than if they had lost all their army; and they did not fail to honour him with burial and with a statue.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If the Lord— who is the light of all things— vouchsafe to enlighten me, I will treat of Light; wherefore I will divide the present work into 3 Parts... Linear Perspective, The Perspective of Colour, The Perspective of Disappearance.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If you condemn painting, which is the only imitator of all visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which brings philosophy and subtle speculation to the consideration of the nature of all forms— seas and plains, trees, animals, plants and flowers— which are surrounded by shade and light. And this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature; for painting is born of nature— or, to speak more correctly, we will say it is the grandchild of nature; for all visible things are produced by nature, and these her children have given birth to painting. Hence we may justly call it the grandchild of nature and related to God.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our Saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images...
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If you transmit the rays of the sun through a hole in the shape of a star you will see a beautiful effect of perspective in the spot where the sun's rays fall.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

If you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely Necessity and Potency. Water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

In order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is generated.
-- 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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, I mean, if you do not understand the matter well.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do not understand.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is impossible that the eye should project from itself, by visual rays, the visual virtue, since, as soon as it opens, that front portion [of the eye] which would give rise to this emanation would have to go forth to the object and this it could not do without time. And this being so, it could not travel so high as the sun in a month's time when the eye wanted to see it.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It is true that impatience, the mother of stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to dissect it!
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Ivy is of longevity.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

King of the animals— as thou hast described him— I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest— because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth . But we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Life well spent is long.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light. Primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. And derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. A primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course... No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress ...
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Love, Fear, and Esteem,— Write these on three stones.
-- 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

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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude. Pharisees— that is to say, friars.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to God.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false— and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation— and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

May it please our great Author that I may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way I describe his figure.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Men out of fear will cling to the thing they most fear.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Movement will cease before we are weary of being useful.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

No small hole can so modify the convergence of rays of light as to prevent, at a long distance, the transmission of the true form of the luminous body causing them.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing is that which fills no space. If one single point placed in a circle may be the starting point of an infinite number of lines, and the termination of an infinite number of lines, there must be an infinite number of points separable from this point, and these when reunited become one again; whence it follows that the part may be equal to the whole.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one's former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year— deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming— does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. And you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O Earth! why dost thou not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel and horrible monster.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O Man, who will discern in this work of mine the wonderful works of Nature, if you think it would be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of a man; and if this, his external form, appears to thee marvellously constructed, remember that it is nothing as compared with the soul that dwells in that structure; for that indeed, be it what it may, is a thing divine. Leave it then to dwell in His work at His good will and pleasure, and let not your rage or malice destroy a life— for indeed, he who does not value it, does not himself deserve it.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O 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 Vinci

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Of Hemispheres, which are infinite; and which are divided by an infinite number of Lines, so that every Man always has one of these Lines between his Feet.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Of several luminous bodies of equal size and brilliancy and at an equal distance, that will look the largest which is surrounded by the darkest background.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Oh! human stupidity, do you not perceive that, though you have been with yourself all your life, you are not yet aware of the thing you possess most of, that is of your folly? and then, with the crowd of sophists, you deceive yourselves and others, despising the mathematical sciences, in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things included in them. And then you occupy yourself with miracles, and write that you possess information of those things of which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by any instance from nature. And you fancy you have wrought miracles when you spoil a work of some speculative mind, and do not perceive that you are falling into the same error as that of a man who strips a tree of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves mingled with the scented blossoms or fruit
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

One who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns— that is, breastplates of iron.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

One's thoughts turn towards Hope.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Our body is dependant on heaven and heaven on the Spirit.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Our life is made by the death of others.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. The Pyramid is the name I apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Represent your figures in such action as may be fitted to express what purpose is in the mind of each; otherwise your art will not be admirable.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Sculptured figures which appear in motion, will, in their standing position, actually look as if they were falling forward.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Seeing that I can find no subject specially useful or pleasing— since the men who have come before me have taken for their own every useful or necessary theme— I must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. I, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares I offer may be worth.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter. All such matters are more powerful in their beginning and grow weaker towards the end, I say at the beginning, whatever their form or condition may be and whether visible or invisible. And it is not from small beginnings that they grow to a great size in time; as it might be a great oak which has a feeble beginning from a small acorn. Yet I may say that the oak is most powerful at its beginning, that is where it springs from the earth, which is where it is largest
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Tell me if anything was ever done.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

That the atmosphere attracts to itself, like a loadstone, all the images of the objects that exist in it, and not their forms merely but their nature may be clearly seen by the sun, which is a hot and luminous body. All the atmosphere, which is the all-pervading matter, absorbs light and heat, and reflects in itself the image of the source of that heat and splendour and, in each minutest portion, does the same. The Northpole does the same as the loadstone shows; and the moon and the other planets, without suffering any diminution, do the same.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

That which has no limitations, has no form. The limitations of two conterminous bodies are interchangeably the surface of each. All the surfaces of a body are not parts of that body.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

There will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. But these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. But woe to him who comes between them! For he will end by being cut in pieces.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

There will be many which will increase in their destruction.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

There will be many who will eagerly and with great care and solicitude follow up a thing, which, if they only knew its malignity, would always terrify them. Of those men, who, the older they grow, the more avaricious they become, whereas, having but little time to stay, they should become more liberal.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

These rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. But you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

These rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience— the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

This writing distinctly about the kite seems to be my destiny, because among the first recollections of my infancy, it seemed to me that, as I was in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Those men who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.— Folks little indebted to Nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.
-- 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

Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it.
-- 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. They go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. And they will not allow me my own. They will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they— who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others— be blamed.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

To manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

To preserve Nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find means of offence and defence, when it is assailed by ambitious tyrants, and first I will speak of the situation of the walls, and also I shall show how communities can maintain their good and just Lords.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Truth here makes Falsehood torment lying tongues.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Truth was the only daughter of Time.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us...
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

We ought not to desire the impossible.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
-- 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

What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

When I did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. Now if I do it being grown up, you will do worse to me.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

When the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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

When you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

When you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject. Thus, if he speaks persuasively, let his action be appropriate to it. If the matter in hand be to set forth an argument, let the speaker, with the fingers of the right hand hold one finger of the left hand, having the two smaller ones closed; and his face alert, and turned towards the people with mouth a little open, to look as though he spoke; and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward. If you represent him standing make him leaning slightly forward with body and head towards the people. These you must represent as silent and attentive, all looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration; and make some old men in astonishment at the things they hear, with the corners of their mouths pulled down and drawn in, their cheeks full of furrows, and their eyebrows raised, and wrinkling the forehead where they meet.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

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