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Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the Dead.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Every body that is moved continues to move so long as the impression of the force of its mover is retained in it, therefore the movement of this wing with violence... will come to move the whole bird with it until the impetus of the moved air has been consumed.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Nature is full of infinite causes which were never set forth in experience.
Leonardo da Vinci -
One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.
Leonardo da Vinci
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As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory:-That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men.
Leonardo da Vinci -
The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Remember that your bird should have no other model than the bat, because its membranes serve as an armour or rather as a means of building together the pieces of its armour, that is the framework of the wings.
Leonardo da Vinci -
The solar rays will kindle fire on the earth, by which a thing that is under the sky will be set on fire, and, being reflected by some obstacle, it will bend downwards.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.
Leonardo da Vinci -
The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Chi poco pensa, molto erra.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
Leonardo da Vinci -
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.
Leonardo da Vinci
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There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands.
Leonardo da Vinci -
A luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by fogs.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.
Leonardo da Vinci -
The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.
Leonardo da Vinci