58 Intelligent Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, leading artist, intellectual of the Italian Renaissance, architect, mathematician, inventor, and writer.
Born on April 15, 1452, as the illegitimate child of the wealthy notary and a peasant girl, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, Leonardo was raised by his father, Piero da Vinci, and his stepmothers. He was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio, and later worked in Milan, Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his last years in France at the home given to him by Francis I.
During his life, he mastered so many disciplines that he epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the “Renaissance man”. Like the many others leaders of Renaissance humanism, he believed that art was strongly connected with science and nature.
Today, he is widely known for his art, including two paintings, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Mona Lisa is the most famous and the most parodied portrait while The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time.
His work and observations were recorded in more than 10,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for anatomy, war machinery, flying machines, and architecture.
Here are 58 intelligent quotes to celebrate the life of this great genius.
As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams with the imagination being awake?The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
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.Life, art and science, the thoughts of Leonardo by Leonardo da Vinci
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The Common Sense, is that which judges of things offered to it by the other senses.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood by Sigmund Freud
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.Thoughts on Art and Life by Leonardo da Vinci
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The knowledge of the past times and of the places of the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The eye — which sees all objects reversed — retains the images for some time.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The water that you touch in a river the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which comes is coming. Thus it is with time present.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci