Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

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.

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.

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.

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.

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 spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

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.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Our body is dependant on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

The length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.

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.

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.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

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

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

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.

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.

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 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.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Our life is made by the death of others.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

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.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Life well spent is long.

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

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

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.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.