"It is better to imitate ancient than..." - Quote by Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

“My body is not a tomb for animals.”

“A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.”

“I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.”

“O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.”

“Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.”

“Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.”

“Give me yesterday's bread, this day's flesh, and last year's cider”