Quotes By Leonardo da Vinci

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.

The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.

If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.

Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.

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.

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. Life, if well spent, is long.

Men fight wars and destroy everything around them. The earth should open and swallow them up. He who does not value life does not deserve it. Never destroy another life through rage, or through malice.

If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.

The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the words with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.

In time and with water, everything changes.

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.