Leonardo Da Quotes & Sayings

Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist, arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Wisdom is the daughter of experience — Leonardo Da Vinci

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine.
[On Leonardo Da Vinci] — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Legions of grotesques sweep under his hand; for has not nature too her grotesques - the rent rock, the distorting lights of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure of man in the embryo, or the skeleton? — Walter Pater

The days are long enough for those who use them. — 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 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

After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights. — Leonardo Da 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

He who does not understand the supreme certainty of mathematics is wallowing in confusion. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Especially learn how to see. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls. — Edvard Munch

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

The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was homosexual, so was Michelangelo, Socrates, Shakespeare, and almost every other figure that has formed what we have come to understand as beauty. — Reinaldo Arenas

The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses. — 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

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

The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images. — Leonardo Da Vinci

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. — 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

Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings ... if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines. — 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. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions. — Leonardo Da Vinci

That which has no limitations, has no form. — Leonardo Da Vinci

To speak of this subject you must ... explain the nature of the resistance of the air, in the second the anatomy of the bird and its wings, in the third the method of working the wings in their various movements, in the fourth the power of the wings and the tail when the wings are not being moved and when the wind is favourable to serve as guide in various movements. — 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

I feel that any man that tries, any man that comes out with something we like, is a good man. A man doesn't have to be Leonardo Da Vinci to be sincere. — Jack Kirby

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

For in truth great love is born of great knowledge of the thing loved. — Leonardo Da Vinci

We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The dilemma is this. In the modern world knowledge has been growing so fast and so enormously, in almost every field, that the probabilities are immensely against anybody, no matter how innately clever, being able to make a contribution in any one field unless he devotes all his time to it for years. If he tries to be the Rounded Universal Man, like Leonardo da Vinci, or to take all knowledge for his province, like Francis Bacon, he is most likely to become a mere dilettante and dabbler. But if he becomes too specialized, he is apt to become narrow and lopsided, ignorant on every subject but his own, and perhaps dull and sterile even on that because he lacks perspective and vision and has missed the cross-fertilization of ideas that can come from knowing something of other subjects. — Henry Hazlitt

Of the horse I will say nothing because I know the times. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Necessity is a guardian in Nature. — 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

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance — Leonardo Da Vinci

No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

One can have no more mastery over the environment, than one has over himself. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 — Robert Greene

Life well spent is long. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Weight is caused by one element being situated in another; and it moves by the shortest line towards its centre, not by its own choice, not because the centre draws it to itself, but because the other intervening element cannot withstand it. — 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

Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. — 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

Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ. — Leonardo Da Vinci

While you are alone you are entirely your own master and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behavior. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present. — 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

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

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

It is useful to constantly observe, note, and consider. — 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

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

There are many kinds of beauty as people who possess it. — Leonardo Da Vinci

In whatever system where the weight attached to the wheel should be the cause of motion of the wheel, without any doubt the center of the gravity of the weight will stop beneath the center of its axle. No instrument devised by human ingenuity, which turns with its wheel, can remedy this effect. Oh, speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest. Go and take you place with the seekers after gold. — Leonardo Da Vinci

He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they'd be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. — Banksy

He who never puts his trust in any man will never be deceived. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar. — Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The Maestro spoke again. "When we are not, at what point do we become?"
I could not reply. For I had grasped no shape of his thoughts. I understood neither what he said nor his intent behind it. — Theresa Breslin

The structural similarity of men, and their ability to be represented both as ideal, like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, and as average. Man being the measure of all things, and therefore a sort of standard and interchangeable unit of length, breadth, intelligence, emotion. We could lay them end to end to measure the distance between the continents, the distance to the moon. We could use them to calculate the weight of weather, or to buy things at the grocery. With such an abundance of men, we could gauge anything we chose. — Alexandra Kleeman

He who wishes to see how the soul inhabits the body should look to see how that body uses its daily surroundings. If the dwelling is dirty and neglected, the body will be kept by its soul in the same condition, dirty and neglected. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Savage is he who saves himself. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Men fight wars and destroy everything around them. The earth should open and swallow them up. He who does not value life does not deserve it. Never destroy another life through rage, or through malice. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Who sows virtue ought to reap honour. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The eye transmits its own image through the air to all the objects which face it, and also receives them on its own surface, whence the "sensus communis" takes them and considers them. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The most sublime of oddballs, Leonardo da Vinci — Norman Maclean

O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold. — 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

This was not completely true. I had run so fast that I still had a stitch in my side, but I did not want to be left out of their confraternity of guilt. — Theresa Breslin

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

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The painter must be solitary. For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are only half yourself. — Leonardo Da Vinci

It's amazing - and poignant - to think that Leonardo (da Vinci)did consider himself as something of a failure. He didn't believe that he had achieved everything he might have done. His notebooks have a repeated refrain: 'Tell me if I ever did a thing. — Ross King

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

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

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I wish to work miracles ... — Leonardo Da Vinci

Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth. — Theresa Breslin

There is nothing in man or nature that does not ask questions. — Curtis Bill Pepper

The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it. — Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Some promises and time disappoint us — Leonardo Da Vinci

I've never believed that they're separate. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry. The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians. Some are better than others, but they all consider that an important part of their life. I don't believe that the best people in any of these fields see themselves as one branch of a forked tree. I just don't see that.People bring these things together a lot. Dr. Land at Polaroid said, "I want Polaroid to stand at the intersection of art and science," and I've never forgotten that. I think that that's possible, and I think a lot of people have tried. — Steve Jobs

Water is the driving force of all nature. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Thirst will parch your tongue and your body will waste through lack of sleep ere you can describe in words that which painting instantly sets before the eye. — Leonardo Da Vinci