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Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci


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.
– Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
– Leonardo da Vinci
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
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.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Life well spent is long.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Our life is made by the death of others.
– Leonardo da Vinci
People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
– Leonardo da Vinci
There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Water is the driving force of all nature.
– Leonardo da Vinci
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
– Leonardo da Vinci
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Who sows virtue reaps honor.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
– Leonardo da Vinci
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Intellectual passion dries out sensuality.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
– Leonardo da Vinci
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Nature never breaks her own laws.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Learning never exhausts the mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
– Leonardo da Vinci
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
– Leonardo da Vinci
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
– Leonardo da Vinci
As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
– Leonardo DaVinci
Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.
– Leonardo DaVinci
Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
– Leonardo DaVinci