Best 493 quotes of Leonardo Da Vinci on MyQuotes

Leonardo Da Vinci

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A clever man without wisdom is like a beautiful flower without fragrance.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A day will come in which men will look upon an animal's murder the same way they look today upon a man's murder.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A deaf and dumb person who sees two men in conversation - may nevertheless understand from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, how well their discussion is getting along.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck to its job.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Affective gestures pointing to things near either in time or space should be made with the hand not very far from the body of the person pointing; and if these things are distant, the hand of the painter should be more extended and the face turned toward the person to whom he is addressing the demonstration.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A good memory, which nature has endowed us with, causes things long past to seem present.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A gray day provides the best light.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A life well used procures a happy death.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    All the bystanders at an event worthy of note adopt various gestures of admiration when contemplating the occurrence.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A long life is a life well spent.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings... if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A man was desired to rise from bed because the sun was already up. He replied: "If I had as far to go and as much to do as he has, I should be up by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not get up yet.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Among the great things which are found among us the existence of Nothing is the greatest.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Any color is more distinctly seen when opposed to its contrary: thus, black on white, blear near yellow, green near red, and so on.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Art is never finished, only abandoned.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Ask advice of him who governs himself well.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    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.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

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    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.