Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

“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.”

“A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck to its job.”

“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”

“Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.”

“Every obstacle is destroyed through rigor.”

“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.”

“We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.”

“Not to anticipate is already to moan.”

“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.”

“We know well that mistakes are more easily detected in the works of others than in one's own.”

“As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do”

“The boundaries of bodies are the least of all things.”

“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.”

“The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.”

“Being engulfed in practice without delicate knowledge related to it, is in many ways like entering a ship without knowing where it is headed.”

“The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration.”

“The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind.”

“Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.”

“The study of what is excellent is food for the mind and body.”

“The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.”

“Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.”

“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.”

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

“Learn diligence before speedy execution.”

“Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.”