Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.
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Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
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O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away.
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There will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. But these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. But woe to him who comes between them! For he will end by being cut in pieces.
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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.
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One's thoughts turn towards Hope.
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You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
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Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia.
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What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art.
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Our body is dependent on heaven and heaven on the Spirit.
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We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them.
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A shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background.
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Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude. Pharisees - that is to say, friars.
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Truth was the only daughter of Time.
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Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
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Of several luminous bodies of equal size and brilliancy and at an equal distance, that will look the largest which is surrounded by the darkest background.
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No small hole can so modify the convergence of rays of light as to prevent, at a long distance, the transmission of the true form of the luminous body causing them.
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Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.
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Nothing is that which fills no space. If one single point placed in a circle may be the starting point of an infinite number of lines, and the termination of an infinite number of lines, there must be an infinite number of points separable from this point, and these when reunited become one again; whence it follows that the part may be equal to the whole.
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Since the wings are swifter to press the air than the air is to escape from beneath the wings the air becomes condensed and resists the movement of the wings; and the motive power of these wings by subduing the resistance of the air raises itself in a contrary movement to the movement of the wings.
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The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.
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The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
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The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
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May it please our great Author that I may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way I describe his figure.