Leonardo da Vinci
It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.Collection: Wisdom
The natural desire of good men is knowledge.Collection: Men
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.Collection: Work
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.Collection: Brainy
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.Collection: Science
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.Collection: Pet
Who sows virtue reaps honor.Collection: Memorial
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.Collection: Fear
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.Collection: Death
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.Collection: Death
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.Collection: Intelligence
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.Collection: Knowledge
For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.Collection: Knowledge
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.Collection: Wisdom
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.Collection: Hope
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.Collection: Experience
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.Collection: Experience
The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle.Collection: Nature
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.Collection: Time
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.Collection: Work
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.Collection: Courage
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.Collection: Art
Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.Collection: Knowledge
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.Collection: Work
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.Collection: Time
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.Collection: Death
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.Collection: Food
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.Collection: Time
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.Collection: Knowledge
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.Collection: Intelligence
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.Collection: Food
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.Collection: Sad
Our life is made by the death of others.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Nature
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.Collection: Power
Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.Collection: Work
Art is never finished, only abandoned.Collection: Art
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.Collection: Men
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.Collection: Truth
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.Collection: Men
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.Collection: Nature
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.Collection: Learning
Life well spent is long.Collection: Life
Water is the driving force of all nature.Collection: Nature
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.Collection: Education
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?Collection: Imagination
Learning never exhausts the mind.Collection: Learning
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.Collection: Knowledge
Nature never breaks her own laws.Collection: Nature