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Léonard de Vinci citations
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Léonard de Vinci , né à Vinci le 15 avril 1452 et mort à Amboise le 2 mai 1519, est un peintre florentin et un homme d'esprit universel, à la fois artiste, organisateur de spectacles et de fêtes, scientifique, ingénieur, inventeur, anatomiste, peintre, sculpteur, architecte, urbaniste, botaniste, musicien, poète, philosophe et écrivain.

Après son enfance à Vinci, Léonard est élève auprès du célèbre peintre et sculpteur florentin Andrea del Verrocchio. Ses premiers travaux importants sont réalisés au service du duc Ludovic Sforza à Milan. Il œuvre ensuite à Rome, Bologne et Venise et passe les dernières années de sa vie en France, à l'invitation du roi François Ier.

Léonard de Vinci est souvent décrit comme l’archétype et le symbole de l’homme de la Renaissance, un génie universel, un philosophe humaniste, observateur et expérimentateur, avec un « rare don de l’intuition de l’espace », et dont la curiosité infinie est seulement égalée par la force d’invention. Nombre d'auteurs et d'historiens le considèrent comme l'un des plus grands peintres de tous les temps et certains comme la personne la plus talentueuse dans le plus grand nombre de domaines différents ayant jamais vécu,.

C'est d'abord comme peintre que Léonard de Vinci est reconnu. Deux de ses œuvres, La Joconde et La Cène, sont des peintures mondialement célèbres, souvent copiées et parodiées, et son dessin de l’Homme de Vitruve est également repris dans de nombreux travaux dérivés. Seule une quinzaine d'œuvres est parvenue jusqu'à nous ; ce petit nombre est dû à ses expérimentations constantes et parfois désastreuses de nouvelles techniques et à sa procrastination chronique. Néanmoins, ces quelques œuvres, jointes à ses carnets contenant dessins, diagrammes scientifiques et réflexions sur la nature de la peinture, sont un legs aux générations suivantes d'artistes ; nombre de ces derniers le considérant comme seulement égalé par Michel-Ange.

Comme ingénieur et inventeur, Léonard développe des idées très en avance sur son temps, comme l'avion, l'hélicoptère, le sous-marin et même jusqu'à l'automobile. Très peu de ses projets sont réalisés ou même seulement réalisables de son vivant, mais certaines de ses plus petites inventions comme une machine pour mesurer la limite élastique d'un câble entrent dans le monde de la manufacture. En tant que scientifique, Léonard de Vinci a beaucoup fait progresser la connaissance dans les domaines de l'anatomie, du génie civil, de l'optique et de l'hydrodynamique.

✵ 15. avril 1452 – 2. mai 1519
Léonard de Vinci photo
Léonard de Vinci: 363   citations 0   J'aime

Léonard de Vinci: Citations en anglais

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

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

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

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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?”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“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.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to God.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Fear arises sooner than anything else.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. …The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size…”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“There will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. But these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. But woe to him who comes between them! For he will end by being cut in pieces.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“If the Lord — who is the light of all things — vouchsafe to enlighten me, I will treat of Light; wherefore I will divide the present work into 3 Parts… Linear Perspective, The Perspective of Colour, The Perspective of Disappearance.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“If you take as your pattern the wings of feathered birds, these are more powerful in structure of bone and sinew because they are penetrable, that is to say the feathers are separated from one another and the air passes through them. But the bat is aided by its membrane, which binds the whole together and is not penetrated by the air.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Whenever you make a figure of a man or of some graceful animal remember to avoid making it seem wooden; that is it should move with counterpoise and balance in such a way as not to seem a block of wood.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“May it please our great Author that I may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way I describe his figure.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“A luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variante: Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr.

“Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Be not false about the past.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the Common Sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. Rather is it entirely in one part. Because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul — for the reason given above — may perceive it in the surface of the eye.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“He who walks straight rarely falls.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The properties of the air are such that it may become condensed or rarefied.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“The line has in itself neither matter nor substance and may rather be called an imaginary idea than a real object; and this being its nature it occupies no space. Therefore an infinite number of lines may be conceived of as intersecting each other at a point, which has no dimensions and is only of the thickness (if thickness it may be called) of one single line.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

“Truth here makes Falsehood torment lying tongues.”

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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

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