Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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All objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. The image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. All the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere.
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The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
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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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Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.
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Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them; and therefore they are of the colour of night, that is black. And in cold countries it is just the contrary.
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Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
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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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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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The air which is struck with most swiftness by the movable thing is compressed to the greatest degree in itself.
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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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Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.
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I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.
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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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Feathers shall raise men towards the heaven even as they do the birds:-That is by the letters written by their quills.
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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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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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To preserve Nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find means of offence and defence, when it is assailed by ambitious tyrants, and first I will speak of the situation of the walls, and also I shall show how communities can maintain their good and just Lords.
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We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
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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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The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.
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There will be many which will increase in their destruction.
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The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed.