Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.

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

It is a far worthier thing to read by the light of experience than to adorn oneself with the labors of others.

But to me all sciences seem vain and full of error that are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, and do not terminate in an actual experience.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

To be a winner you must want to win but must know of the chance of losing and must not fear of it.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Life well spent is long.

The study of what is excellent is food for the mind and body.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

I have learned from an early age to 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.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

Nothing can be love or hated unless it is first known.

People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.