Top 596 Quotes & Sayings by Leonardo da Vinci

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works compose a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.

Italian - Artist | April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519

Source: Wikipedia

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

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

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

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

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

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

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

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Leonardo da Vinci

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

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

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

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.

Leonardo da Vinci

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Our life is made by the death of others.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Leonardo da Vinci

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Leonardo da Vinci

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

Leonardo da Vinci

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.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

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

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

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

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

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Leonardo da Vinci

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature never breaks her own laws.

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

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Leonardo da Vinci

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

Leonardo da Vinci

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work... men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

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

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

Leonardo da Vinci

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

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

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

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

Life well spent is long.

Leonardo da Vinci

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

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; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

Leonardo da Vinci

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Leonardo da Vinci

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

Leonardo da Vinci

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci