Quotes from Leonardo da Vinci

Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.

Vows begin when hope dies.

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

The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow.

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.

In her (nature's) inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

When you are alone you are all your own.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

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.

A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with as many other waves as there are uneven places in the object where the said wave is produced.

Fine gold is recognized when it is tested.

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.

I have wasted my hours.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle.

In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . .

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.