Leonardo da Vinci
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.Collection: Nature
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.Collection: Truth
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.Collection: Change
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.
I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.
The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height.
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
I have wasted my hours.
Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.
Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.
I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.
There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.
The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.
The Medici created and destroyed me.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
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.
It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.
There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.
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.
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.
The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.
Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.
Our body is dependant on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit.
Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.Collection: Learning
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.Collection: Inspirational
Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.Collection: Experience
It's not enough that you believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.Collection: Believe
Be a mirror, absorb everything around you and still remain the sameCollection: Mirrors
Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.Collection: Art
Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!Collection: Thinking
Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.Collection: Evil