Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

367 Sourced Quotes

Lust is the cause of generation
Appetite is the support of life
Fear or timidity is the prolongation of life, and
Fraud the preservation of its instruments.

Leonardo da Vinci
If you take as your pattern the wings of feathered birds, these are more powerful in structure of bone and sinew because they are penetrable, that is to say the feathers are separated from one another and the air passes through them. But the bat is aided by its membrane, which binds the whole together and is not penetrated by the air.

Leonardo da Vinci
The eye, which is said to be the window of the soul, is the primary way in which the sensory receptacle of the brain may more fully and magnificently contemplate the infinite works of nature, and the ear is the second, gaining nobility through the recounting of things which the eye has seen.

Leonardo da Vinci
If you, historians or poets or mathematicians, had not seen things through your eyes, you would only be able to report them poorly by writing. And if you, poet, claim to portray a story as if painting with your pen, the painter with his brush will more readily satisfy and will be understood less tediously. If you assert that painting is dumb poetry, then the painter may call poetry blind painting.

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

Leonardo da Vinci
The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.

Leonardo da Vinci
It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite.

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
The Bactrian have two humps; the Arabian one only. They are swift in battle and most useful to carry burdens. This animal is extremely observant of rule and measure, for it will not move if it has a greater weight than it is used to, and if it is taken too far it does the same, and suddenly stops and so the merchants are obliged to lodge there.

Leonardo da Vinci
We might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.

Leonardo da Vinci
Let no one read me who is not a mathematician in my beginnings.

Leonardo da Vinci
Therefore, O students, study mathematics, and do not build without foundations.

Leonardo da Vinci
Here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant.

Leonardo da Vinci
He who blames [refutes] the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and will never impose silence upon the contradictions of the sophistical sciences, which occasion a perpetual clamor.

Leonardo da Vinci
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.

Leonardo da Vinci
Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

Leonardo da Vinci
Man has within him the lake of the blood where the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so likewise the body of the earth has its oceans which also rise and fall in consequence of the world's breathing.

Leonardo da Vinci
There are many occasions when the muscles that form the lips of the mouth move the lateral muscles that are joined to them, and there are an equal number of occasions when these lateral muscles move the lips of this mouth, replacing it where it cannot return of itself, because the function of muscle is to pull and not to push except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

Leonardo da Vinci
It is by testing that we discern fine gold.

Leonardo da Vinci
There is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated.

Leonardo da Vinci
Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting.

Leonardo da Vinci
You must first propound the theory and then explain the practice.

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

Leonardo da Vinci
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

Leonardo da Vinci
Without reason no effect is produced in nature; understand the reason and you will not need experience.

Leonardo da Vinci
Weight, pressure, and accidental movement together with resistance are the four accidental powers in which all the visible works of mortals have their existence and their end.

Leonardo da Vinci
There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.

Leonardo da Vinci
If a drop of water falls into the sea when it is calm, it must of necessity be that the whole surface of the sea is raised imperceptibly, seeing that water cannot be compressed within itself, like air.

Leonardo da Vinci
What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?

Leonardo da Vinci