Nature never breaks her laws.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The painter's work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce good fruits.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
O time! swift devourer of all created things!
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
He is a poor disciple who does not surpass his master.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
They who are enamoured of practice without knowledge are like the mariner who puts to sea in a vessel without rudder or compass, and who navigates without a course.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
The good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the purpose of his mand. The first is easy, the second is difficult, since he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is to be learnt from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
There is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated. And if thou sayest that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Truth was the only daughter of Time.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity -- by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
For youth, everything is sport.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, attributed, Day's Collacon
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