Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

367 Sourced Quotes

To manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.

Leonardo da Vinci
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.

Leonardo da Vinci
Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.

Leonardo da Vinci
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.

Leonardo da Vinci
O mathematicians, throw light on this error.

Leonardo da Vinci
I say that the blueness we see in the atmosphere is not intrinsic colour, but is caused by warm vapour evaporated in minute and insensible atoms on which the solar rays fall, rendering them luminous against the infinite darkness of the fiery sphere which lies beyond and includes it.

Leonardo da Vinci
In the study of the sciences which depend on mathematics, those who do not consult nature, but authors, are not the children of nature; they are only her grandchildren. Nature alone is the master of true genius.

Leonardo da Vinci
The mole has very small eyes and it always lives under ground; and it lives as long as it is in the dark but when it comes into the light it dies immediately, because it becomes known;--and so it is with lies.

Leonardo da Vinci
The light for drawing from nature should come from the North in order that it may not vary. And if you have it from the South, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. The height of the light so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself.

Leonardo da Vinci
In nature there is no effect without cause; once the cause is understood there is no need to test it by experience.

Leonardo da Vinci
I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils

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

Leonardo da Vinci
Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?

Leonardo da Vinci
It reflects no great honour on a painter to be able to execute one thing well.

Leonardo da Vinci
The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow.

Leonardo da Vinci
Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship.

Leonardo da Vinci
The interpreter of the wonders of nature is experience. It never misleads us, only our grasp can do it with us. Until we can establish a general rule, we must accept the help of experience. Although nature begins with the cause, and with the experiment, we must do it inversely, we must discover the cause with experiments.

Leonardo da Vinci
If thou sayest that sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty.

Leonardo da Vinci
A painter was asked why, since he made such beautiful figures, which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children by night.

Leonardo da Vinci
You who speculate on the nature of things, I praise you not for knowing the processes which nature ordinarily effects of herself, but rejoice if so be that you know the issue of such things as your mind conceives.

Leonardo da Vinci
The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me.

Leonardo da Vinci
Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals.

Leonardo da Vinci
To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast.

Leonardo da Vinci
The water wears away the mountains and fills up the valleys, and if it had the power it would reduce the earth to a perfect sphere.

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
Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

Leonardo da Vinci
If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you.

Leonardo da Vinci
If you wish to gain knowledge of the forms of things, begin with the detail and only move from one detail to another when you have fixed the first firmly in your memory and become well acquainted with it.

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
He who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion and will never be able to solve the contradiction of sophistical sciences which lead to an everlasting clamour.

Leonardo da Vinci