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Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

1452–1519 · lived 67 years

n. 1452-04-15, Anchiano · m. 1519-05-02, Clos Lucé

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Quotes

[ Text accompanying sketch of man with parachute :] If a man have a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and it be twelve braccia across and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining any injury.

The New Yale Book of Quotations

Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labor.

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

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

Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

Cheerfulness is proper to the cock, which rejoices over every little thing, and crows with varied and lively movements.

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.

Sculpture, a very noble art, is one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade … the painter has to invent a process, [whereas] sculpture is helped by nature.

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man’s mind.

The idea or the faculty of imagination serves as both rudder and bridle to the senses, inasmuch as the thing imagined moves the sense.

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death.

Those who become enamored of practices without science are like sailors who go aboard ship without a rudder and compass, for they are never certain where they will land.

The Wisdom of Leonardo da Vinci

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Iron rusts from disue; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

The Notebooks

I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.

People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.

Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.

Winners make it happen. Losers let it happen.

In her [Nature’s] inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Edward McCurdy (ed. and trans.) Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook (1906) bk. 1

Of several bodies all equally larger and distant, that most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.

When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.

I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not ‘singular’ or ‘distant,’ or whatever you like to call him.

O time! swift devourer of all created things!

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever lasting.

The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it.

The length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.

We should not desire the impossible.

The eye encompasses the beauty of the whole world.

A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.

My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.

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

Abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love.

The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of color at long distances.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.

Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.

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