Leonardo Da Vinci: Trending quotes (page 7)

“Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

World , Food

“The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), VI Perspective of Colour and Aerial Perspective

Light , Parting

“We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Food , Animals

“First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Nature , Animals

“O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Life , Death , Art , Sleep

“Disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to God and tend to hell.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

God , Hell

“Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them; and therefore they are of the colour of night, that is black. And in cold countries it is just the contrary.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XVII Topographical Notes

Love , Men , Light , Night

“Men will deal rude blows to that which is the cause of their life: They will thrash the grain.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Life , Men

“In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely Necessity and Potency. Water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Strong , Water , Sun

“The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Light , Sun

“I obey Thee Lord, first for the love I ought, in all reason to bear Thee; secondly for that Thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Love , Men

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

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Envy

“Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one's former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year — deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming — does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. And you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

World , Hope , Home , Soul

“To manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“A shadow may be infinitely dark, and also of infinite degrees of absence of darkness. The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade

Lie , Light

“The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Tree

“To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

God , Truth , Lie

“Painting is concerned with all the ten attributes of sight, namely darkness and brightness, substance and colour, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest; and it is with these attributes that this my small book will be woven, recalling to the painter by what rules and in what way he ought by his art to imitate all things that are the work of nature and the adornment of the world.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Books , World , Art , Way

“That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Life , Fear , Hope

“The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Life , Mountain , Water