A Quote by Giorgio Vasari

Leonardo da Vinci was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind; and his name became so famous that not only was he esteemed during his lifetime, but his reputation endured and became even greater after his death.

Giorgio Vasari

Quote Topics

After Became Breadth Death Endured Even Famous Greater His Leonardo Lifetime Man Mind Name Only Regal Reputation Spirit Tremendous

Quote Author

Giorgio Vasari
Italian - Artist
July 30, 1511 - June 27, 1574

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all time, strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the dark. He wrote: "For I have found in my own experience that it is of no small benefit, when you lie in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after another, the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find his problems solved. Da Vinci would often stand silent and motionless before a painting for hours, without using his brush, as though waiting for spiritual guidance.

Wilferd Peterson

Ah, he has too many ideas, that man da Vinci. His mind works faster than his hands.

Sarah Dunant

The oft-heard comment that Leonardo [da Vinci]'s genius managed to transcend the culture of his time is amply justified. But his was not a science-fiction voyage into the future as much as a plunge into the past.

Lucio Russo

Leonardo da Vinci was lucky to be born the same year that Johannes Gutenberg opened his printing shop. As a young person, he could get information about whatever struck his curiosity. The Internet is to our age what Gutenberg's press was to his, so he would have loved being alive today.

Walter Isaacson

Indeed, the great Leonardo (da Vinci) remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way. It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries.

Sigmund Freud

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pablo really felt the suffering of people and so became a political animal. But he wanted to bring down extradition because this was the only thing he feared, and it became his obsession, his crusade, his cross.

Virginia Vallejo

Can you imagine being Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1400s trying to describe his ideas for machines that would allow humans to fly to the average person of his time? This is hundreds of years before the invention of electricity, the internal combustion engine, and many other things we take for granted today.

Fabrizio Moreira

Leonardo da Vinci had such a playful curiosity. If you read his notebooks, you'll see he's curious about what the tongue of a woodpecker looks like, but also why the sky is blue, or how an emotion forms on somebody's lips. He understood the beauty of everything. I've admired Leonardo my whole life, both as a kid who loved engineering - he was one of the coolest engineers in history - and then as a college student, when I travelled to see his notebooks and paintings.

Walter Isaacson

Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.

Vincent Van Gogh

Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again.

Tea Obreht

At the age of 16, my father's father dropped dead of a heart attack. And I think it changed the course of his life, and he became fascinated with death. He then became a medical doctor and obviously fought death tooth and nail for his patients.

Sally Mann

A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.

John Bartholomew Gough

A child in his earliest years, when he is only two or a little more, is capable of tremendous achievements simply through his unconscious power of absorption, though he is himself still immobile. After the age of three he is able to acquire a great number of concepts through his own efforts in exploring his surroundings. In this period he lays hold of things through his own activity and assimilates them into his mind.

Maria Montessori

Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.