Quotes By Leonardo da Vinci

Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.

Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being .... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that... O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.

Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.

O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?

Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.

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.

The false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.

It is true that impatience, the mother of stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to dissect it!

Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, labor in vain.

We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.

Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.

The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.

Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws.

The desire to know is natural to good men.

Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.

The most beautiful words of love are told in silence for a look.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life.

Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more.