Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci

About Leonardo da Vinci:

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived in the Western world. He is often referred to as the Father of paleontology, ichnology and architecture. Sometimes he is credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

Leonardo da Vinci

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Leonardo da Vinci

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.

Leonardo da Vinci

I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman P...

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

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

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 certa...

Leonardo da Vinci

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...

Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

Leonardo da Vinci

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils

Leonardo da Vinci

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Leonardo da Vinci

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

Leonardo da Vinci

Shadow is the obstruction of light. Shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will...

Leonardo da Vinci

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Leonardo da Vinci

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shad...

Leonardo da Vinci

Author Bio

  • NameLeonardo da Vinci
  • DescriptionItalian Renaissance polymath
  • AliasesLeonardo; da Vinci
  • BornApril 15, 1452
  • DiedMay 2, 1519
  • CountryRepublic Of Florence
  • ProfessionPainter; Engineer; Astronomer; Philosopher; Anatomist; Mathematician; Sculptor; Polymath; Architect; Civil Engineer; Diplomat; Inventor; Composer
  • WorksAdoration Of The Magi; Virgin Of The Rocks; Mona Lisa; The Last Supper; Lady With An Ermine; Vitruvian Man; Annunciation; St. Jerome In The Wilderness; The Virgin And Child With St. Anne; St. John The Baptist