Leonardo Da Vinci Quotes

Our life is made by the death of others.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

~ 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

They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Quando ouvimos os sinos, ouvimos aquilo que já trazemos em nós mesmos como modelo. Sou da opinião que não se deverá desprezar aquele que olhar atentamente para as manchas da parede, para os carvões sobre a grelha, para as nuvens, ou para a correnteza da água, descobrindo, assim, coisas maravilhosas. O génio do pintor há-de se apossar de todas essas coisas para criar composições diversas: luta de homens e de animais, paisagens, monstros, demónios e outras coisas fantásticas. Tudo, enfim, servirá para engrandecer o artista.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them.

~ 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 with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

As iron rusts when not used, and water gets foul from standing or turns to ice when exposed to cold, so the intellect degenerates without exercise.-Leonard Da Vinci

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

~ 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

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting

~ 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

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

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

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Water is the driving force in nature.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

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 an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases.

~ 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

Fine gold is recognized when it is tested.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

No counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

If the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. He must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

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. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses – ribelli ad essi sensi – such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men to cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci