Alea.iacta.est > Alea.iacta.est's Quotes

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci

“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions”
― Leonardo Da Vinci

“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

“Our life is made by the death of others.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“He who does not oppose evil......commands it to be done.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“While human ingenuity may devise various inventions to the same ends, it will never devise anything more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I awoke only to find that the rest of the world was still asleep.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci

“A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses – ribelli ad essi sensi – such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men to cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della pittura

“And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“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.
Life, if well spent, is long.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

“If the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. He must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, A Treatise on Painting