Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
Italian Renaissance architect, musician, inventor, engineer, sculptor, and painter.
All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
Tell me if anything was ever done.
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
It is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, I mean, if you do not understand the matter well.
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.
The sun gives spirit and life to plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture.
The motive power is the cause of all life.
It is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do not understand.
Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.
Be not false about the past.
Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.
Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.
The atmosphere is blue by reason of the darkness above it because black and white make blue.
A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the object than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and so illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.
All objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids, and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them.
A dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. A light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself.
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
The city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its aggrandizement.