Quotes to inspire and reflect

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

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 45 have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.

It’s not enough that you believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.

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

Learn diligence before speedy execution.

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.

O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.

A gray day provides the best light.

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.

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

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.

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.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in 41 the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

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

To enjoy, to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.

A life well used procures a happy death.

It is useful to constantly observe, note, and consider.

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

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 39 to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.

I wish to work miracles

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

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.

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.

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

Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.

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.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.

Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.

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.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

In time and with water, everything changes.

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

Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is.

You don’t get into trouble because of the things you don’t know. It is the things you don’t know you don’t know that really get you into a mess.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

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.

Not to anticipate is already to moan.

Whoever does not respect life, does not deserve it.

The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.

There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ’tis for some other. The spirit cannot die; and man, who shall know all and shall have wings.

Music may be called the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, the sense which comes second and her harmony is composed of the union of proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms.

Among the great things which are to be found among us, the being of nothingness is the greatest.

He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-pot.