Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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I have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and I have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air.
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There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.
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The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.
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As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.
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Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.
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Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love.
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Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.1
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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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The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.
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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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The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
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The wind which passes through the skins of animals will make men leap up:-That is the bagpipes, which cause men to dance.
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Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.
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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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The bones of the Dead will be seen to govern the fortunes of him who moves them.
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Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
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One who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns - that is, breastplates of iron.
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When the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience.
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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.
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To manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.
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The false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.
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There will be many which will increase in their destruction.
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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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I obey Thee Lord, first for the love I ought, in all reason to bear Thee; secondly for that Thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men.