Leonardo da Vinci Life Quotations

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

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.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

A long life is a life well spent.

As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do

once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.

Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.

Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.

Ask advice of him who governs himself well.

The lover is moved by the thing loved, as the sense is by that which perceives, and it unites with it and they become one and the same thing... when the lover is united with the beloved it finds rest there; when the burden is laid down there it finds rest.

Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.

Life well spent is long.

He who thinks little errs much…

Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work least, for they are thinking out inventions.

Love shows itself more in adversitythan in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place isdarkest.

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.

life without love, is no life at all

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.