Leonardo Da Vinci Quotes
Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
It is a far worthier thing to read by the light of experience than to adorn oneself with the labors of others.
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.
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.
Being engulfed in practice without delicate knowledge related to it, is in many ways like entering a ship without knowing where it is headed.
Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray.
Great love is born of great knowledge of the thing that is loved, and if you do not know it, you can love it little or not at all.
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
But to me all sciences seem vain and full of error that are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, and do not terminate in an actual experience.
When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.
O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.
No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature.
It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
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.
The painter or draftsman ought to be solitary, in order that the well-being of the body not sap the vigour of the mind.
The soul is content to stay imprisoned in the human body... for through the eyes all the various things of nature are represented to the soul.
The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.
We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.
Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.
Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.
What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?