Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci
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Poor is the man who desires a lot.

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

Wood feeds the fire which burns it.

Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

He who does not value life does not deserve it.

He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

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

I have solved what color is, however ; I still have no idea about what line is.

A day will come in which men will look upon an animal's murder the same way they look today upon a man's murder.

Not to appreciate life, all of life, is not to deserve it.

In life beauty perishes, but not in art.

The eye is the window of the human body through which it feels its way and enjoys the beauty of the world.

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

Make an effort to collect the good features from many beautiful faces.

Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!

We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.

If on your own or by the criticism of others you discover error in your work, correct it then and there; otherwise in exposing your work to the public, you will expose your error also.

Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character.

No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.

A good memory, which nature has endowed us with, causes things long past to seem present.

Whatever you think matters -- doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life. Rodger Rosenblatt As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Great love is born of great knowledge of the thing that is loved, and if you do not know it, you can love it little or not at all.

True and great love springs out of great knowledge, and where you know little you can love but little or not at all.

Though I may not ... be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy -- on experience.

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

The knowledge of the past times and of the places of the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly.

Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.

Thirst will parch your tongue and your body will waste through lack of sleep ere you can describe in words that which painting instantly sets before the eye.

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?

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.

Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory: -- That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men.

The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.

An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.

One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.

Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.

Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use.

To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses.

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand.

Learning is the only thing that never disappoints us.

Every man at three years old is half his height.

If we make mistakes in our first compositions and do not know them, we may not amend them.

Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.

If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind.

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

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.

Life without love, is no life at all.

It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.

Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.

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.

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

Anyone who invokes authors in discussion is not using his intelligence but his memory.

Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire -- fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.

Old age takes in part savoury wisdom for its food -- see to that your old age will not lack in nourishment.

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.

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

In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

If anyone wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul.

The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.

O painter skilled in anatomy, beware lest the undue prominence of the bones, sinews and muscles cause you to become a wooden painter from the desire to make your nude figures reveal all.

Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven. That is by letters written with their quills.

The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.

Inaction saps the vigor of the mind.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

My body is not a tomb for animals.

Learn diligence before speedy execution.

In nature's inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.

Nature alone is the master of true genius.

The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.

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.

The light and heat of the universe comes from the sun, and its cold and darkness from the withdrawal of the sun.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.

Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.

Realize that everything connects to everything else.

He who never puts his trust in any man will never be deceived.

A clever man without wisdom is like a beautiful flower without fragrance.

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.