Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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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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We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
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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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It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
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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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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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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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Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.
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Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia.
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Life well spent is long.
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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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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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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 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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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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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 Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.
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Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
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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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Since the wings are swifter to press the air than the air is to escape from beneath the wings the air becomes condensed and resists the movement of the wings; and the motive power of these wings by subduing the resistance of the air raises itself in a contrary movement to the movement of the wings.