Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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Chi poco pensa, molto erra.
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This writing distinctly about the kite seems to be my destiny, because among the first recollections of my infancy, it seemed to me that, as I was in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips.
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Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
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I know that many will call this useless work.
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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.
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What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.
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A luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by fogs.
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The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.
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Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead:-The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.
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Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.
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Impetus is a power of the mover applied in a movable thing which causes the movable thing to move after it is separated from its mover.
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We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us...
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Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
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Be not false about the past.
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It is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, I mean, if you do not understand the matter well.
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The East will be seen to rush to the West and the South to the North in confusion round and about the universe, with great noise and trembling or fury.
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O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.
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Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course... No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress...
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Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
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All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other.
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All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
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O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?
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Our life is made by the death of others.
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Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.