Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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.

Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.

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.

I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not 'singular' or 'distant,' or whatever you like to call him.

The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains.

The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.

Why seek to embarrass [the artist] with vanities foreign to his quietness? Know you not that certain sciences require the whole man, leaving no part of him at leisure for your trifles?

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Most men are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into sh*t.

Threats alone, are the weapons of the threatened man.

Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.

A man of supreme folly: his life flies away while he is merely hoping to enjoy it.

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

Music... is the shaping of the invisible.

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.

The cat is nature's masterpiece.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Vitality and beauty are gifts of Nature for those who live according to its laws.