Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
Italian - Artist April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519



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

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
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

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci

Learning never exhausts the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
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

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
Leonardo da Vinci

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
Leonardo da Vinci

Who sows virtue reaps honor.
Leonardo da Vinci

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
Leonardo da Vinci

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.
Leonardo da Vinci

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
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

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.
Leonardo da Vinci

The length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height.
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
Leonardo da Vinci

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
Leonardo da Vinci

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.
Leonardo da Vinci

The Medici created and destroyed me.
Leonardo da Vinci

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.
Leonardo da Vinci

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