Leonardo da Vinci
The human being, creature of eyes, needs the image.Collection: Eye
My body is not a tomb for animals.Collection: Animal
Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.Collection: Art
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.Collection: Iron
And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.Collection: Men
O admirable necessity! O powerful action! What mind can penetrate your nature? What language can express this marvel? None, to be sure. This is where human discourse turns toward the contemplation of the divine.Collection: Powerful
If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you.Collection: Distance
The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.Collection: Memories
Study me, reader, if you delight in me, because on very few occasions shall I return to the world, and because the patience for this profession is found in very few, and only in those who wish to compose things anew. Come, oh men, to see the miracles that such studies will disclose to nature.Collection: Men
Drawing is based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye.Collection: Eye
I woke up only to find the rest of the world asleep.Collection: World
Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.Collection: Life
Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.Collection: Men
Life, when is spent well, is long.Collection: Long
Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work least, for they are thinking out inventions.Collection: Life
The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it.Collection: Bird
A gray day provides the best light.Collection: Light
The mole has very small eyes and it always lives under ground; and it lives as long as it is in the dark but when it comes into the light it dies immediately, because it becomes known;--and so it is with lies.Collection: Lying
Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.Collection: Nature
Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.Collection: Inspirational
If the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base.Collection: Love
Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offenses, and they cannot hurt your feelings.Collection: Hurt
Nothing will be left, Nothing in the air, nothing under the earth, nothing in the waters. All will be exterminated.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Truth
All our knowledge originates in opinion.Collection: Opinion
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in artCollection: Art
Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.Collection: Intelligent
The lover is moved by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which perceives, and it unites with it and they become one and the same thing... when the lover is united with the beloved it finds rest there; when the burden is laid down there it finds rest.Collection: Inspirational
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.Collection: Two
He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.Collection: Discipline
Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines.Collection: Book
A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.Collection: Men
In life beauty perishes, but not in art.Collection: Art
He who can copy can do.Collection: Copies
Vows begin when hope dies.Collection: Vow
In her (nature's) inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.Collection: Inspirational
The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.Collection: Imagination
The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performanceCollection: Theory
Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws.Collection: Health
If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind.Collection: Wisdom
The moment has no time.Collection: Time Management
The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.Collection: Confused
Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.Collection: Life
Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.Collection: Stupid
Let not your rage or malice destroy a life.Collection: Rage
Truth was always but the daughter of time.Collection: Daughter
First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science.Collection: Art
Ask advice of him who governs himself well.Collection: Inspirational
To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.Collection: Men