Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
-
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.
-
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
-
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.
-
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.
-
We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
-
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.
-
There will be many which will increase in their destruction.
-
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.
-
Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.
-
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.
-
Science, knowledge of the things that are possible present and past; prescience, knowledge of the things which may come to pass.
-
Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
-
The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.
-
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.
-
Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.
-
The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.
-
Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-
Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.
-
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.
-
I give the degrees of things seen by the eye as the musician does of the sounds heard by the ear.