Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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.
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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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Chi poco pensa, molto erra.
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We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us...
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Fame alone raises herself to Heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with God.
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Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
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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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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.
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Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.
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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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The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.
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Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.
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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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The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.
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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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Be not false about the past.
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Whenever you make a figure of a man or of some graceful animal remember to avoid making it seem wooden; that is it should move with counterpoise and balance in such a way as not to seem a block of wood.
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Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
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Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
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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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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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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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All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.