I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
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.
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.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
Water is the driving force of all nature.
Our life is made by the death of others.
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.
Who sows virtue reaps honor.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.
The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
Nature never breaks her own laws.
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
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.
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
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.
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
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.
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.
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
