“The properties of the air are such that it may become condensed or rarefied.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight
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Leonardo Da Vinci 363
Italian Renaissance polymath 1452–1519Related quotes

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

"Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency" http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1892-02-03.htm an address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London (February 1892)

Ici venu, l'avenir est paresse.
L'insecte net gratte la sécheresse;
Tout est brûlé, défait, reçu dans l'air
A je ne sais quelle sévère essence . . .
La vie est vaste, étant ivre d'absence,
Et l'amertume est douce, et l'esprit clair.
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter IV, Sec. 6
Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 3, Follow The Money, p. 47

“They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.”
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 69, Farewell to Nemi
Context: In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.

“Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.”
Usus communis aquarum est.
Nec solem proprium natura nec aera fecit
nec tenues undas
Book VI, 349-351; translation by Michael Simpson https://books.google.ca/books?id=hDPmwbCSSPEC
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 215.
(Buch II) (1893)