It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Notebooks
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
As a well spent day affords happy sleep, so does a life profitably employed afford a happy death.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Lust is the cause of generation.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He who wishes to grow rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body, but it is like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, and which ceases to produce a good effect when a pipe is spoilt.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He who fears dangers will not perish by them.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
And if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offense more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourse and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eyesight.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He who thinks little errs much.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
If the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
When fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
We should not desire the impossible.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He who sows virtue reaps glory.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
A long life is a life well spent.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Notebooks
Knowledge ... shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
