Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

367 Sourced Quotes

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. Men wrongly complain of Experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set Experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. Men are unjust in complaining of innocent Experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence.

Leonardo da Vinci
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Leonardo da Vinci
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Leonardo da Vinci
Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

Leonardo da Vinci
When you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect.

Leonardo da Vinci
Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.

Leonardo da Vinci
Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.

Leonardo da Vinci
It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters.

Leonardo da Vinci
Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.

Leonardo da Vinci
The young man should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. Next, copy work after the hand of a good master, to gain the habit of drawing parts of the body well; and then to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.

Leonardo da Vinci
What is that thing which does not give itself, and which if it were to give itself would not exist? It is the infinite...

Leonardo da Vinci
Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness.

Leonardo da Vinci
When Fortune comes, seize her in front with a sure hand, because behind she is bald.

Leonardo da Vinci
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.

Leonardo da Vinci
I am still hopeful. A falcon, Time. But the coincidence is probably accidental.

Leonardo da Vinci
When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.

Leonardo da Vinci
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.

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 as I said before with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Leonardo da Vinci
Love, Fear, and Esteem, — Write these on three stones.

Leonardo da Vinci
I have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and I have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air.

Leonardo da Vinci
Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.

Leonardo da Vinci
One who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns — that is, breastplates of iron.

Leonardo da Vinci
The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.

Leonardo da Vinci
You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.

Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles do not bend me. Every obstacle is destroyed through rigor.

Leonardo da Vinci