Top 450 Leonardo da Vinci Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

152. “Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

153. “Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

154. “It’s not enough that you believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

155. “Learn diligence before speedy execution.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

156. “The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

157. “If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

158. “There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ’tis for some other. The spirit cannot die; and man, who shall know all and shall have wings.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

159. “Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?”

— Leonardo da Vinci

160. “Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

161. “Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

162. “Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

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

— Leonardo da Vinci

164. “The natural desire of good men is knowledge.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

165. “He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

166. “Make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

167. “Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

168. “Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

169. “The painter must be solitary. For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are only half yourself.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

170. “He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

171. “He who never puts his trust in any man will never be deceived.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

172. “Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

173. “Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

174. “Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

175. “If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

176. “Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

177. “All thoughts start from emotions.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

178. “I’m not contented to capture the world. I want to change it.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

179. “A life well used procures a happy death.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

180. “There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of experimentation.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

181. “Every action done by nature is done in the shortest way.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

182. “Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

183. “You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

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

— Leonardo da Vinci

185. “It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

186. “Music may be called the sister of painting, for she is dependent upon hearing, the sense which comes second and her harmony is composed of the union of proportional parts sounded simultaneously, rising and falling in one or more harmonic rhythms.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

187. “Motion is created by the destruction of balance.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

188. “Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

189. “Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

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

— Leonardo da Vinci

191. “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

192. “A day will come in which men will look upon an animal’s murder the same way they look today upon a man’s murder.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

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

— Leonardo da Vinci

194. “A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

195. “Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

196. “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

197. “Practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

198. “Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

199. “If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

200. “A clever man without wisdom is like a beautiful flower without fragrance.”

— Leonardo da Vinci