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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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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The air which is struck with most swiftness by the movable thing is compressed to the greatest degree in itself.
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Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.
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Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.
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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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Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia.
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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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It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
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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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We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
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All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it.
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Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.
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Life well spent is long.
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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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A man was desired to rise from bed, because the sun was already risen. To which he replied: 'If I had as far to go, and as much to do as he has, I should be risen by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not rise yet.'
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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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The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.
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Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.
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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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All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids, and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.
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Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.
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The earth is not in the centre of the Sun's orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. And any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us.
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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.