Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
-
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.
-
The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed.
-
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.
-
O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.
-
Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.
-
Men will deal rude blows to that which is the cause of their life:-They will thrash the grain.
-
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.
-
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.'
-
To enjoy-to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.
-
Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr.
-
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.
-
While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
-
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.
-
Nothing is so much to be feared as Evil Report.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable.
-
Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
-
Movement will cease before we are weary of being useful.
-
Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it.