“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
“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.”
“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
“The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain.”
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
“Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.”
“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.”
“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
“The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”
“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.”
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
“He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.”
“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
“The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”
“Water is the driving force of all nature.”
“I love those who can smile in trouble...”
“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
“As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.”
“Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.”
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”
“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
“Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”
“The knowledge of all things is possible.”
“As you cannot do what you want, want what you can do.”
“The wisest and noblest teacher is nature itself.”
“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.”
“While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.”
“The most beautiful words of love are told in silence for a look.”
“Fix your course on a star and you’ll navigate any storm.”
“God sells us all things at the price of labor.”
“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.”
“The moment is timeless.”
“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”
“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
“Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”
“Nature never breaks her own laws.”
“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”
“The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”
“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”
“Every obstacle is destroyed through rigor.”
“One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.”
“Everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything.”
“An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength.”
“The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
“All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”
“A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck to its job.”
“The greater the man’s soul, the deeper he loves.”
“Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.”
“The desire to know is natural to good men.”
“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.”
“Vows begin when hope dies.”
“Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”
“He who walks straight rarely falls.”
“Therefore, O students, study mathematics and do not build without foundations.”
“Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws.”
“Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.”
“Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.”
“The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.”
“Life well spent is long.”
“He turns not back who is bound to a star.”
“Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.”
“The lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things, it would take off something from God’s grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.”
“He who does not understand the supreme certainty of mathematics is wallowing in confusion.”
“Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”
“It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.”
“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”
“I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand.”
“Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.”
“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.”
“Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.”
“If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.”
“Lust is the cause of generation.”
“If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.”
“Here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant.”
“Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.”
“The mind of a painter should be like a mirror which is filled with as many images as there are things placed before him.”
“Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.”
“Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.”
“To make a perfume, take some rose water and wash your hands in it, then take a lavender flower and rub it with your palms, and you will achieve the desired effect.”
“Inequality is the cause of all local movements.”
“The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.”
“If you are on the side whence the wind is blowing you will see the trees looking much lighter than you would see them on the other sides; and this is due to the fact that the wind turns up the reverse side of the leaves which in all trees is much whiter than the upper side.”
“If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it.”
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