Quotes to inspire and reflect

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

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.

Those who are enamored of practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass and never has any certainty of where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory.

The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.

M a k e yo u r s e l f a m a s t e r o f perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals.

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

He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.

Whoever in debate quotes authority uses not intellect, but memory.

The motive power is the cause of all life.

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

The five senses are the ministers of the soul.

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.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Savage is he who saves himself.

Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.

The eye, the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding can most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of Nature; and the ear is second.

An artist’s studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

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

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, labor in vain.

Our life is made by the death of others.

If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, 25 then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no color of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the color of the objects surrounding it.

If you are on the side whence the wind is blowing you will see the trees looking much lighter than you would see them on the other sides; and this is due to the fact that the wind turns up the reverse side of the leaves which in all trees is much whiter than the upper side.

The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.

Inequality is the cause of all local movements.

Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.

To make a perfume, take some rose water and wash your hands in it, then take a lavender flower and rub it with your palms, and you will achieve the desired effect.

The mind of a painter should be like a mirror which is filled with as many images as there are things placed before him.

Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.

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.

Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.

Lust is the cause of generation.

If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Color, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.

Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.

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

He who does not understand the supreme certainty of mathematics is wallowing in confusion.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.

Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.

He turns not back who is bound to a star.