Leonardo Da Vinci: Quotes about men

“Feathers shall raise men towards the heaven even as they do the birds. That is by the letters written by their quills.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Bird

“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.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Quoted allegedly "From da Vinci`s Notes" in Jon Wynne-Tyson: The Extended Circle. A Dictionary of Humane Thought. Centaur Press 1985, p. 65 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=1mMbAQAAIAAJ&q=murder.
Actually the quote is not authentic but made up from a novel by Dmitri Merejkowski (w:Dmitry Merezhkovsky) entitled "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci" (La Résurrecton de Dieux 1901), translated from Russian into English by Herbert Trench. G.P. Putnam's Sons New York and London, The Knickerbocker Press. There, in Book (i.e. chapter) VI, entitled The Diary of Giovanni Boltraffio, one finds the following:
The master [Leonardo da Vinci] permits harm to no living creatures, not even to plants. Zoroastro http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Masini tells me that from an early age he has abjured meat, and says that the time shall come when all men such as he will be content with a vegetable diet, and will think on the murder of animals as now they think on the murder of men ( p. 226 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=g_pa0OaYX64C&pg=PA226).
However, despite the quote's false attribution, da Vinci was in fact a vegetarian.
Misattributed

Men , Age , Time , Animals

“Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Of dreams
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
Context: Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course.

Men

“Those men who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Folks little indebted to Nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Men , Nature

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

For Men , Men , Suffering

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Men , Time , Animals

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

Leonardo Da Vinci

Men

“What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting

Men , Art

“Seeing that I can find no subject specially useful or pleasing — since the men who have come before me have taken for their own every useful or necessary theme — I must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. I, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares I offer may be worth.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Way

“It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Food , Nature , Knowledge

“An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

"Of Selling Paradise"
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Men , Justice

“There will be many who will eagerly and with great care and solicitude follow up a thing, which, if they only knew its malignity, would always terrify them. Of those men, who, the older they grow, the more avaricious they become, whereas, having but little time to stay, they should become more liberal.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Time

“Men out of fear will cling to the thing they most fear.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Fear

“Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false — and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation — and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Thinking , Falseness , Despair

“Things severed shall be united and shall acquire of themselves such virtue that they shall restore to men their lost memory. That is the papyrus sheets, which are formed out of several strips and preserve the memory of the thoughts and deeds of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

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

Men , Memory

“Swimming upon water teaches men how birds do upon the air.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

Men , Bird , Water

“Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

"Of Hemispheres, which are infinite; and which are divided by an infinite number of Lines, so that every Man always has one of these Lines between his Feet."
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Men , Understanding

“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

“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

“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