261 quotes
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely divisible.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Swimming upon water teaches men how birds do upon the air.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
Every instrument requires to be made by experience.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
He who does not value life does not deserve it.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
Wine is good, but water is preferable at table.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
The painter strives and competes with nature.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
One's thoughts turn towards Hope.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
Man and animals are really the passage and the conduit of food, the sepulchre of animals and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead [bodies].
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1888)
That part of the air which is nearest to the wing which presses on it, will have the greatest density.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
I ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)
I give the degrees of things seen by the eye as the musician does of the sounds heard by the ear.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938)
The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)