Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

“Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.”

“Putting your hand into a river, you simultaneously touch the last of what is passing and the first of what is coming.”

“Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.”

“To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses.”

“Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.”

“Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?”

“Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.”

“He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.”

“Life is pretty simple:You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works.You do more of what works.”

“Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.”

“life without love, is no life at all”

“Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.”

“Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.”

“Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.”

“Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.”

“King of the animals — as thou hast described him — I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest — because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth.”

“I shall do down in history as the man who opened a door!”

“I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.”

“Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body.”

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

“All thoughts start from emotions.”

“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.”

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.”

“Whoever does not respect life, does not deserve it.”

“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”