Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci

We do not lack devices for measuring these miserable days of ours, in which it should be our pleasure that they be not frittered away without leaving behind any memory of ourselves in the mind of men.

The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.

Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death

E veramente accade che sempre dove manca la ragione suppliscono le grida[...]

I know that there are numberless people who would, to satisfy a whim, destroy God and all the universe.

Whatever— the soup is getting cold. [Last sentence of a mathematical theorem in Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, 1518]

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.

It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test,—else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,—yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time.

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.

Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares.

Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.

The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.

As a day well spent makes sleep seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long.

I love to kiss my girl when we watch deep Netflix shows

He had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience.

There is nothing in all nature without its reason, he wrote. If you know the reason, you do not need the experience.

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes: so with time present.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

For once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude." "Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

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.

To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, firsthand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses such as the existence of god or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention

Je tiefer das Gefühl, desto größer der Schmerz.