Quotes By Leonardo da Vinci

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.

If the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. He must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other.

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard: but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined.

The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and, above all others, the most useful.

Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them.

So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of God it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted.

We do not lack devices for measuring these miserable days of ours, in which it should be our pleasure that they be not frittered away without leaving behind any memory of ourselves in the mind of men.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience.

People of accomplishments rarely sit back and let things happen to them. They go out and happen to things.

A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument.

The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.

Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares.

Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.

Be a mirror, absorb everything around you and still remain the same.

Fix your course on a star and you'll navigate any storm.