261 quotes
All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids, and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
That which has no limitations, has no form. The limitations of two conterminous bodies are interchangeably the surface of each. All the surfaces of a body are not parts of that body.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
When I did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. Now if I do it being grown up, you will do worse to me.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.
A Treatise on Painting (1651)
Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles...
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
Fear arises sooner than anything else.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
We ought not to desire the impossible.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
He who walks straight rarely falls.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
A point is not part of a line.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
I, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares I offer maybe worth.
Look at the grace and sweetness of men and women in the street...