Quotes from 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.

First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science.

He only moves toward the perfection of his art whose criticism surpasses his achievement.

How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.

As iron rusts when not used, and water gets foul from standing or turns to ice when exposed to cold, so the intellect degenerates without exercise.-Leonard Da Vinci

art is never finished, only abandoned

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

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

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.

Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.

What induces you, oh man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not for the beauty of the world of nature?

There are many kinds of beauty as people who possess it.

The eye encompasses the beauty of the whole world.

Here are three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

I have solved what color is, however ; I still have no idea about what line is.

I am not poor. Poor are those who desire many things.

Nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

We ought not to desire the impossible.

My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.