Quotes By Leonardo Da Vinci

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

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.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

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

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

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

I have wasted my hours.

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.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

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

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

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

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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

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

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.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

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

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.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Our life is made by the death of others.