Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

"Learning never exhausts the mind."

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it."

"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."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

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

"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."

"I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have."

"Tears come from the heart and not from the brain."

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master."

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

"Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge."

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."

"Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity."

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

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

"Who sows virtue reaps honor."

"The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."

"Water is the driving force of all nature."

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

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death."

"Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers."

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

"A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not."

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

"The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence."

"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."

"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."

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality."