Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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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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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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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 outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the light and the shadows they are highly conspicuous.
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Life well spent is long.
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Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
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When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.
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Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia.
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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 luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow.
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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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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 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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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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We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
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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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Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
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The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.
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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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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 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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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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The body which is nearest to the light casts the largest shadow, and why? If an object placed in front of a single light is very close to it you will see that it casts a very large shadow on the opposite wall, and the farther you remove the object from the light the smaller will the image of the shadow become.