“The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variant: In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Source: Leonardo's Notebooks
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Leonardo Da Vinci 363
Italian Renaissance polymath 1452–1519Related quotes

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy
Variant: Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 370]

“Time flows away like the water in the river.”
Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 1 : D'Alembert: The Thinker, p. 29

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 10
Context: In swampy places, alder piles driven close together beneath the foundations of buildings take in the water which their own consistence lacks and remain imperishable forever, supporting structures of enormous weight and keeping them from decay. Thus a material which cannot last even a little while above ground, endures for a long time when covered with moisture.

"The Earth an Evolution", p. 35
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Physical Kinship