Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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He who does not value life does not deserve it.
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A luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow.
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That which has no limitations, has no form. The limitations of two conterminous bodies are interchangeably the surface of each. All the surfaces of a body are not parts of that body.
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In order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is generated.
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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.
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Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
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One's thoughts turn towards Hope.
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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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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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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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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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Constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres.
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Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
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The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
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Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr.
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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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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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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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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 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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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 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.