Browse — The Da Vinci Book of Quotes

"Learning never exhausts the mind."

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."

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

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply."

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art."

"The painter has the universe in his mind and hands."

"Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity."

"Water is the driving force of all nature."

"The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."

"Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power."

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."

"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."

"He who does not punish evil commands it to be done."

"Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art."

"The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of Nature."

"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve."

"I love those who can smile in trouble."

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward."

"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time."

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it."

"Life well spent is long."

"men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of the desire for wisdom, which is the sustenance and truly dependable wealth of the mind."

"The good painter has to paint two principal things, man and the intention of his mind."

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master."

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

"There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who do not see."

"Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known."

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

"He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss."

"The desire to know is natural to good men."

"Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind."

"The eye encompasses the beauty of the whole world."

"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."

"Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness."

"The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake."

"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."

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

"Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs."

"Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge."

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast."

"I have wasted my hours."

"As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself."

"The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue."

"He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind."

"The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good."

"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."

"Who sows virtue reaps honor."

"Every action needs to be prompted by a motive."

"It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end."

"Nature never breaks her own laws."

"The smallest feline is a masterpiece."

"Wisdom is the daughter of experience."

"The greatest wisdom is to see one's own foolishness."

"The greatest secret is that the thing which is most difficult to know is the thing closest to you — yourself."

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

"A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements."

"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."

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

"You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself."

"I have from an early age 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."

"The human body is a machine which winds its own springs; it is the living image of perpetual motion."

"Our life is made by the death of others. In dead matter insensible life remains, which, reunited to the stomachs of living things, resumes life, both sensual and intellectual."

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality."

"The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects."

"The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain."

"Fix your course to a star and you can navigate any storm."

"He turns not back who is bound to a star."

"The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence."

"Nothing is stronger than habit."

"The eyes are the windows of the soul."

"Ask counsel of him who rules himself well."

"He who is not curious will not learn. He who does not learn will not grow."

"The natural desire of good men is knowledge."

"Realize that everything connects to everything else."

"I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die."

"He who does not value life does not deserve it."

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

"Threats only frighten the undecided; firm souls make no account of them."

"Every action done in company ought to be done with some sign of living accord."

"The mind of the painter should be like a mirror which always takes the color of the thing that it reflects, and contains as many images as there are things placed before it."

"Painting is the sole means of reproducing all the known works of nature."

"Among the great things which are found among us, the existence of nothing is the greatest."

"I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have."

"The art of painting embraces and contains within itself all visible things."

"A well-spent day is followed by a happy sleep; in the same way, a life well spent is followed by a happy death."

"The painter strives and competes with nature."

"The shadows of shadows of shadows of a body will be compounded of all the aforesaid tints intermingled."

"The sun has never heard the lamentations of the dead."

"Science is the captain, practice the soldier."

"Whoever despises painting loves neither philosophy nor nature."

"The painter who has no doubts achieves little."

"To develop a complete mind: study the art of science, study the science of art. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."

"The hand that delineates cannot do otherwise than be guided by the mind."

"A painter is not admirable unless he is universal."

"He who loves a thing for its utility rather than for its beauty does not understand it."

"The greatest misfortune is when theory outstrips performance."

"Ask me — but why? — and I will tell you: because there are more good answers in the asking than in the not-asking."

"Among all human opinions, that of the painter is most worthy; for he holds converse with nature."

"I have always felt it incumbent upon me to describe each thing in the most exact way possible: to always ask — how does this actually work?"

"The eye is the window of the human body through which it feels its way and enjoys the beauty of the world."

"Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting."

"Motion is the cause of every life."

"In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself."

"Shadow is the privation of light and it appears to me that it is the most subtle and the hardest to study of any science."

"Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world."

"The rivers are the veins of the earth, and the tides are its breathing."

"The stone, the soil, the water, and the fire make war with one another; but man is the one who benefits, and enjoys the beautiful spectacle."

"I wish to work miracles."

"Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker."

"Nothing can be desired that is more excellent than the union of eyes and ears, which gives the perfection of all knowledge."

"The object of the painter is to delight, to move, to convince."

"What is beautiful is not always good, but what is good is always beautiful."

"He who thinks little errs much."

"The span of a man's outstretched arms is equal to his height."

"Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire spoils the memory."

"I awoke only to find that the rest of the world is still asleep."

"The most relentlessly curious man in history."

"Leonardo da Vinci was the greatest genius who ever lived."

"He was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind."

"In him was such a rare combination of gifts, that whatever he directed his attention to, he was able to penetrate with such ease and force, that no artist has ever surpassed him."

"Whoever looks upon this work shall not see how it is possible for a human hand to equal such perfection."

"I have wasted my life, since I have never yet seen a work that satisfied me."

"There have been, of course, many other insatiable polymaths, and even the Renaissance produced other Renaissance Men. But none painted the Mona Lisa."

"Leonardo was the most talented person who ever lived. He could do anything."

"Sigmund Freud wrote that Leonardo was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness while others were still sleeping."

"He was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep."

"Napoleon said that whoever understands Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari understands war."

"He was, perhaps, the most diversely talented person ever to have lived."

"Michelangelo, his great rival, once said that Leonardo had the most magnificent mind that had ever been born."

"The Mona Lisa is the world's most visited, most written about, most sung about, most parodied work of art."

"He was the supreme example of the Renaissance ideal — not just knowing many things, but seeing the connections between them all."

"Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the hill town of Vinci, in the region of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina."

"At fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the renowned artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, one of the great workshops of the Renaissance."

"In 1476 Leonardo was accused of sodomy in an anonymous denunciation — the charges were dropped, but the incident left a mark. He spent much of his life hiding his personal life."

"In 1482, at age thirty, Leonardo left Florence for Milan, where he would spend the next seventeen years at the court of Ludovico Sforza, working as a painter, engineer, and entertainer."

"Around 1490, Leonardo began the Vitruvian Man — his famous drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and square, an attempt to reconcile human proportions with geometry."

"Leonardo began The Last Supper in 1495 and completed it around 1498. It remains the most analyzed and copied painting in history."

"In 1499 the French invaded Milan and Ludovico Sforza fled. Leonardo left, beginning a decade of wandering — Florence, Venice, Rome — that would define his middle years."

"In 1503 Leonardo returned to Florence and began the Mona Lisa — a work he would carry with him and continue refining for over a decade."

"Leonardo began dissecting human corpses around 1487, eventually studying more than thirty bodies. His anatomical drawings remained the most accurate in the world for over a century."

"In 1516, at age sixty-four, Leonardo accepted the invitation of King Francis I of France and moved to Amboise, where he would spend the last three years of his life."

"Leonardo da Vinci died on May 2, 1519, at Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise, France. He was sixty-seven years old. Francis I, the king of France, is said to have held him in his arms."

"At his death, Leonardo left behind over 7,200 pages of notebooks — less than a quarter of what he likely produced. They contain the most extraordinary record of a genius at work in all of human history."

"Leonardo never married, had no known romantic relationships with women, and likely had a decades-long intimate relationship with his pupil Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salaì."

"The Battle of Anghiari, commissioned in 1503, was never finished. The cartoon — the preparatory drawing — was considered by many contemporaries the greatest drawing ever made. It is lost."

"Tell me if anything was ever done. Tell me if anything was ever done."

"Above all, Leonardo's relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it — to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different."

"The greatest lesson from Leonardo's life is that creativity involves connecting things that others find unrelated."

"He showed that the secret to genius is a childlike sense of wonder that never fades."

"His was a combo that he shared with other great innovators: a desire to understand nature and the humanity embedded within it."

"If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information."

"He made lists of things he wanted to learn — how to describe the tongue of a woodpecker, the jaw of a crocodile, the placenta of a calf — and then relentlessly pursued each item."

"There is no reason you actually need to know any of this. But I thought maybe, after reading this book, that you, like Leonardo, who one day put 'Describe the tongue of the woodpecker' on one of his to-do lists, would want to know. Just out of curiosity. Pure curiosity."

"One mark of a great mind is the willingness to change it. We can see that in Leonardo."

"Leonardo's notebooks offer the most vivid record we have of a great mind at work, with all of its passions and quirks on display."

"Leonardo da Vinci was not divine. He was human — brilliantly, stubbornly, fascinatingly, imperfectly human. That is what makes him worth studying."