Quotes by
Leonardo da Vinci |
1452-1519 , Italian polymath & painter
Painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper and Mona Lisa are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. He was the archetypal renaissance man.
| 39 quotes | 1,557 visits |
Quotations
| • | Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. 8 |
| • | Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. 5 |
| • | I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. (his last words) 2 |
| • | Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light. |
| • | A dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. A light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself. |
| • | Our life is made by the death of others. |
| • | Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature. |
| • | Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master. |
| • | It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. |
| • | Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. |
| • | As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. |
| • | Truth was the only daughter of Time. |
| • | Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker. |
| • | He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss. |
| • | He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year. |
| • | He who does not punish evil commands it to be done. |
| • | It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters. |
| • | A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. |
| • | The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. |
| • | Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. |
| • | The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding. |
| • | Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood. |
| • | Art is never finished, only abandoned. |
| • | The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. |
| • | The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue. |
| • | The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain. |
| • | I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die. |
| • | The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. |
| • | The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of. |
| • | Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. |
| • | God sells us all things at the price of labor. |
| • | Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else. |
| • | Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets. |
| • | Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake? |
| • | Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel. |
| • | Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail. |
| • | Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. |
| • | Tears come from the heart and not from the brain. |
| • | Nature never breaks her own laws. |
