Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

“Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.”

“Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.”

“When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.”

“Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.”

“The lover is drawn by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which it perceives.”

“Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: - The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.”

“He who can copy can do.”

“Learning is the only thing that never disappoints us.”

“The human being, creature of eyes, needs the image.”

“We might say that the earth has the spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil.”

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep.”

“I am not poor. Poor are those who desire many things.”

“If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.”

“When the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze.”

“Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements.”

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

“A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.”

“How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.”

“A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.”

“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.”

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

“Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.”

“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.”

“Everything proceeds from everything else and everything becomes everything, and everything can be turned into everything else.”

“The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.”