Quotes By Leonardo Da Vinci

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

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.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

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.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

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.

Life well spent is long.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

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.

Our life is made by the death of others.