Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.
Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.
Be eager to lend a patient ear to the opinions of others and think long and hard whether whoever finds fault has reason or not to censure you. And if the answer is yes, correct the fault. If no, give the impression that you have not heard him, or if he is a man whom you respect, explain to him why he is mistaken.
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
...The world wouldn't be the world, without trouble.
A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck to its job.
To speak ill of a good person is not truly good, all in all.
It is useful to constantly observe, note, and consider.
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
Good writing comes from good talent.
All thoughts start from emotions.
My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.
Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work... men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.
Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting.
We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
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.
Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.
Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.
I have wasted my hours.
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.
average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.
He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.
Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.
Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
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.
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.
Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.
I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. 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.
A man was desired to rise from bed because the sun was already up. He replied: "If I had as far to go and as much to do as he has, I should be up by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not get up yet."
If we make mistakes in our first compositions and do not know them, we may not amend them.
Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgment of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.
I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils
You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
Being engulfed in practice without delicate knowledge related to it, is in many ways like entering a ship without knowing where it is headed.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
... we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age.
A day will come in which men will look upon an animal's murder the same way they look today upon a man's murder.
Especially learn how to see.
You should prefer a good scientist without literary abilities than a literate one without scientific skills
The moment is timeless.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.
Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.
When you look at a wall spotted with stains...you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautiful with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees. Or again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects which you could reduce to complete and well-drawn figures.
Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
O Time with your teethy years! You swallow up all things little by little in a slow-motion, wrinkling process of dying.
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.
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
In time and with water, everything changes.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
