Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”

“Ask advice of him who governs himself well.”

“Most men are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into sh*t.”

“My body is not a tomb for animals.”

“People of higher talent work, even if they seem to do nothing”

“Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.”

“Lying on a feather mattress or quilt will not bring you renown.”

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

“I love this site. It was lovingly hand-shaped it. Your soul transformed this into this art. It was perfect. I have tried to create another equal to it... but to no avail, so I will just have to paint the Sistine Chapel.”

“No human investigation can claim to be scientific if it doesn't pass the test of mathematical proof.”

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

“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.”

“Nature never breaks her own laws.”

“Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.”

“People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life.”

“Threats alone, are the weapons of the threatened man.”

“There are many kinds of beauty as people who possess it.”

“It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.”

“Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws.”

“A long life is a life well spent.”

“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”

“A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with as many other waves as there are uneven places in the object where the said wave is produced.”

“The light for drawing from nature should come from the North in order that it may not vary. And if you have it from the South, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. The height of the light so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself.”

“Shadows which you see with difficulty, and whose boundaries you cannot define... these you should not represent as finished or sharply defined, for the result would be that your work would seem wooden.”

“One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.”