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.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
Our body is dependant 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Medici created and destroyed me.
The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height.
The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work... men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.
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.
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.
People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.
The natural desire of good men is knowledge.
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
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.
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.
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.
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
I have wasted my hours.
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Life well spent is long.
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.
Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.
I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.
It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
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.
The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.
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.
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.
It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
