Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

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

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.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

The knowledge of all things is possible

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.

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

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Obstacles cannot bend me. Every obstacle yields to effort.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.

Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

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

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

He who does not oppose evil......commands it to be done.

Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose

once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

Our life is made by the death of others.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

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.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

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

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

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

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

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

Wisdom is the daughter of experience

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

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.

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

When 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.

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

The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee...gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

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.

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

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

He turns not back who is bound to a star.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.

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

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.

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

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

A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul.