Leonardo da Vinci
Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory: - That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men.Collection: Memories
All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass.Collection: Past
The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.Collection: Order
The motive power is the cause of all life.Collection: Intelligent
Of the four elements water is the second in weight and the second in respect of mobility. It is never at rest until it unites with the sea.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Race
Perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. The Pyramid is the name I apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point.Collection: Distance
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.Collection: Law
If you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. Let us hope that.Collection: Patience
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.Collection: Inspirational
The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.Collection: Distance
One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Men
The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow.Collection: Imagination
To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast.Collection: Light
A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.Collection: Ocean
The Bactrian have two humps; the Arabian one only. They are swift in battle and most useful to carry burdens. This animal is extremely observant of rule and measure, for it will not move if it has a greater weight than it is used to, and if it is taken too far it does the same, and suddenly stops and so the merchants are obliged to lodge there.Collection: Moving
Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.Collection: Men
Test knowledge through experience, be prepared to make mistakes, and be persistent about it.Collection: Mistake
One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings.Collection: Animal
After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights.Collection: Art
A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.Collection: Men
One's thoughts turn towards Hope.Collection: Hope
Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.Collection: Memories
Shadow is the obstruction of light. Shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will be ill-understood unless they are shown against a background of a different tone from themselves.Collection: Light
Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray.Collection: Small Rooms
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.Collection: Beautiful
You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.Collection: Attitude
Music cannot be called otherwise than the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, a sense second to sight, and her harmony is composed of the union of its proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms.Collection: Nature
No human investigation can claim to be scientific if it doesn't pass the test of mathematical proof.Collection: Ontology
That painter who has no doubts will achieve little.Collection: Doubt
Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.Collection: Intelligent
You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of uneven color. If you have to invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells, in whose stroke you may find every named word which you can imagine.Collection: Wall
Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.Collection: Wisdom
Old age takes in part savoury wisdom for its food - see to that your old age will not lack in nourishment.Collection: Age
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.Collection: Ambition
Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: - The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.Collection: Reading
Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Funny
O time! swift devourer of all created things!Collection: Time
Fix your course on a star and you’ll navigate any storm.Collection: Stars
Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: – The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.Collection: Reading
The first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear as a body in relief and projecting from that plane.Collection: Firsts