Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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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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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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Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.
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All the rays which convey the images of objects through the air are straight lines. Hence, if the images of very large bodies have to pass through very small holes, and beyond these holes recover their large size, the lines must necessarily intersect.
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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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Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
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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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I ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable.
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If you take as your pattern the wings of feathered birds, these are more powerful in structure of bone and sinew because they are penetrable, that is to say the feathers are separated from one another and the air passes through them. But the bat is aided by its membrane, which binds the whole together and is not penetrated by the air.
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The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.
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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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Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.
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Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr.
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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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Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.
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If you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay.
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Men will deal rude blows to that which is the cause of their life:-They will thrash the grain.
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The function which the wing performs against the air when the air is motionless is the same as that of the air moved against the wings when these are without motion.
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Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.
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The smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and this is proved because the natural point has continuity, and any thing that is continuous is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it has no size.
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Movement will cease before we are weary of being useful.
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Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
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To enjoy-to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.
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The spirit has no voice, because where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body space is occupied, and this prevents the eye from seeing what is placed behind that space; hence the surrounding air is filled by the body, that is by its image.