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“Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

“Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

“Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being …. behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that… O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“Ivy is of longevity.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations
Variant: Ivy is [a type] of longevity.

“Life well spent is long.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy

“The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy

“The wind which passes through the skins of animals will make men leap up: That is the bagpipes, which cause men to dance.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XLV Prophecies

“A luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by fogs.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

“The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective

“In order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is generated.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“When I did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. Now if I do it being grown up, you will do worse to me.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

“The spirit has no voice, because where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body space is occupied, and this prevents the eye from seeing what is placed behind that space; hence the surrounding air is filled by the body, that is by its image.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“If you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XI The Notes on Sculpture

“Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles…”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Of the eye
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

“Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“The smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and this is proved because the natural point has continuity, and any thing that is continuous is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it has no size.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective

“The motive power is the cause of all life.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“That the atmosphere attracts to itself, like a lodestone, all the images of the objects that exist in it, and not their forms merely but their nature may be clearly seen by the sun, which is a hot and luminous body. All the atmosphere, which is the all-pervading matter, absorbs light and heat, and reflects in itself the image of the source of that heat and splendor and, in each minutest portion, does the same. The north pole does the same as the lode stone shows; and the moon and the other planets, without suffering any diminution, do the same.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective