Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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Science, knowledge of the things that are possible present and past; prescience, knowledge of the things which may come to pass.
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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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In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely Necessity and Potency. Water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power.
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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.
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Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
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Every body in light and shade fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself; and these, by infinite pyramids diffused in the air, represent this body throughout space and on every side.
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Life well spent is long.
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O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.
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Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.
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Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
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Many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to God.
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Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.
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Perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. The Pyramid is the name I apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point.
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Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
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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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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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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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Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.
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I give the degrees of things seen by the eye as the musician does of the sounds heard by the ear.
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The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.
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The point, being indivisible, occupies no space. That which occupies no space is nothing. The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.
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The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images.
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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.