There are not many people who have had as influential a life as they have a legacy, but Leonardo da Vinci is one of those people. Born on April 15, 1452, he was one of the founders of the High Renaissance and an artist who strived for perfection in both form and composition. He also captured the human expression; da Vinci's work largely consists of such profound subjects as observation, curiosity and art as it blends with the sciences and nature. Arguably, his most popular work, the Mona Lisa painting, has been the topic of discussion for decades on what exactly her delicate smile might mean and has been an inspiration for many artists. An impact of that magnitude simply cannot be overlooked.
Not only a brilliant painter, da Vinci was also a sculptor, an architect, an engineer, a scientist, an inventor and a theorist. His achievements and contributions to the late 15th and early 16th centuries are as vast as they are enduring. His words are as relatable today as they were in his lifetime, and there is something to be found in them that everyone can enjoy.
The wide range of knowledge that da Vinci held was truly ahead of his time. He has even been attributed to inventing early variations of the helicopter and robots! If you're interested in learning more about this man's insights and want to apply his words to your life, continue reading to discover 75 Leonardo da Vinci quotesthat will enlighten you and expand your world.
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75 Best Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time." "Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." "Every action needs to be prompted by a motive." "Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs." "Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge." "Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!" "The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang." "Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers." "The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects." "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." "Intellectual passion drives out sensuality." "All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions." "Our body is dependent on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit." "Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body." "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." "Water is the driving force of all nature." "There are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all." "Common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses." "Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel." "Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory." "As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself."Related: 105 Stoic Quotes From Philosophers of Stoicism About Life, Happiness and Wisdom
Famous Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
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"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." "For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all." "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." "Nature never breaks her own laws." "I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do." "Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness." "The natural desire of good men is knowledge." "Learning never exhausts the mind." "I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly." "Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law." "The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height." "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." "Our life is made by the death of others." "Time abides long enough for those who make use of it." "I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have." "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." "The noblest treasure is the joy of understanding." "The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation."Related: 'Everything Popular Is Wrong'—Here Are the 50 Best Oscar Wilde Quotes
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes on Art
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"A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not." "The smallest feline is a masterpiece." "The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence." "It is better to imitate ancient than modern work." "Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?" "He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." "There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near." "Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: darkness, light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and propinquity, motion and rest." "The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle." "Art is never finished, only abandoned." "The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow." "Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading." "Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art." "It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.""Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.""Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.""The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the color of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it." "If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them."Related: 120 Courage Quotes To Motivate and Inspire You
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes About Life
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"Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity." "Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it." "Tears come from the heart and not from the brain." "Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man." "Experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments." "How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting." "You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself." "He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind." "Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form." "Who sows virtue reaps honor." "I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death." "The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything." "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death." "There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see." "Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason." "You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." "Life well spent is long." "Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."Up Next:
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