Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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.
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I am still hopeful. A falcon, Time. But the coincidence is probably accidental.
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The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.
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Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.
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It is always the under side of the branches of any plant that show themselves to the wind which strikes it, and one leans against the other.
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Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
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The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead.
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The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
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That part of the air which is nearest to the wing which presses on it, will have the greatest density.
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Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.
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Reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.
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The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.
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You will perhaps say that the sinews and muscles of a bird are incomparably more powerful than those of a man... But the reply to this is that such great strength gives it a reserve of power beyond what it ordinarily uses...
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The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.
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The motive power is the cause of all life.
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The senses are of the earth; Reason, stands apart in contemplation.
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Tell me if anything was ever done.
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The eye can best distinguish the forms of objects when it is placed between the shaded and the illuminated parts.
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We ought not to desire the impossible.
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Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.
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Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.
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Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.