Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

“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.”

“The first of all simple colours is White ... We shall set down White for the representative of light, without which no colour can be seen; Yellow for the earth; Green for water; Blue for air; Red for fire; and Black for total darkness.”

“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.”

“There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.”

“Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.”

“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.”

“Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.”

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

“I have solved what color is, however ; I still have no idea about what line is.”

“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.”

“Of several bodies, all equally large and equally distant, that which is most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.”

“A life well used procures a happy death.”

“There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.”

“First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science.”

“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.”

“I love those who can smile in trouble.”

“He who does not understand the supreme certainty of mathematics is wallowing in confusion.”

“Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.”

“Any color is more distinctly seen when opposed to its contrary: thus, black on white, blear near yellow, green near red, and so on.”

“We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us.”

“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”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Inequality is the cause of all local movements.”