Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

367 Sourced Quotes

In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely Necessity and Potency. Water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power.

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

Leonardo da Vinci
Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.

Leonardo da Vinci
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.

Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Leonardo da Vinci
Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.

Leonardo da Vinci
Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course... No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress...

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

Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing is that which fills no space. If one single point placed in a circle may be the starting point of an infinite number of lines, and the termination of an infinite number of lines, there must be an infinite number of points separable from this point, and these when reunited become one again; whence it follows that the part may be equal to the whole.

Leonardo da Vinci
What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.

Leonardo da Vinci
All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it.

Leonardo da Vinci
Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.

Leonardo da Vinci
The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.

Leonardo da Vinci
Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.

Leonardo da Vinci
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 offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.

Leonardo da Vinci
We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.

Leonardo da Vinci
Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God.

Leonardo da Vinci
Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.

Leonardo da Vinci
Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.

Leonardo da Vinci
Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love.

Leonardo da Vinci
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.

Leonardo da Vinci
You know that in an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therfore you should make the building... wall which is more distant less defined and bluer.... five times as far away make five times as blue.

Leonardo da Vinci
Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely divisible.

Leonardo da Vinci
Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

Leonardo da Vinci
The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

Leonardo da Vinci
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

Leonardo da Vinci
There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.

Leonardo da Vinci
Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

Leonardo da Vinci
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.

Leonardo da Vinci
Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.

Leonardo da Vinci