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A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the object than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and so illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
Leonardo da Vinci -
We ought not to desire the impossible.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to God and tend to hell.
Leonardo da Vinci -
It is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do not understand.
Leonardo da Vinci -
The atmosphere is blue by reason of the darkness above it because black and white make blue.
Leonardo da Vinci -
A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Every instrument requires to be made by experience.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Wine is good, but water is preferable at table.
Leonardo da Vinci
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He who offends others, does not secure himself.
Leonardo da Vinci -
He who does not punish evil commands that it be done.
Leonardo da Vinci -
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art.
Leonardo da Vinci -
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
Leonardo da Vinci -
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.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Fire may be represented as the destroyer of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences or subtle things.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not.
Leonardo da Vinci -
That which was at first bound, cast out and rent by many and various beaters will be respected and honoured, and its precepts will be listened to with reverence and love.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
Leonardo da Vinci -
There will be many who will eagerly and with great care and solicitude follow up a thing, which, if they only knew its malignity, would always terrify them. Of those men, who, the older they grow, the more avaricious they become, whereas, having but little time to stay, they should become more liberal.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Truth was the only daughter of Time.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity - by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles...
Leonardo da Vinci -
Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.
Leonardo da Vinci -
Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
Leonardo da Vinci