Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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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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I am still hopeful. A falcon, Time. But the coincidence is probably accidental.
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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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Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.
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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.
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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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No impetus created by any movement whatever can be immediately consumed, but if it finds an object which has a great resistance it consumes itself in a reflex movement.
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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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Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.
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The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.
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Our life is made by the death of others.
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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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To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.
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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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We ought not to desire the impossible.
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Every instrument requires to be made by experience.
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You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.
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The senses are of the earth; Reason, stands apart in contemplation.
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I find that any luminous body when seen through a dense and thick mist diminishes in proportion to its distance from the eye. Thus it is with the sun by day, as well as the moon and the other eternal lights by night. And when the air is clear, these luminaries appear larger in proportion as they are farther from the eye.
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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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Swimming upon water teaches men how birds do upon the air.
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I ask how far away the eye can discern a non-luminous body, as, for instance, a mountain. It will be very plainly visible if the sun is behind it; and could be seen at a greater or less distance according to the sun's place in the sky.
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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...