Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in Vinci, Italy, was one of the most prolific and influential figures of the Italian Renaissance. Renowned as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist, and inventor, da Vinci’s genius spanned a wide range of disciplines and fields.
As a painter, da Vinci created some of the most iconic works of art in history, including the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper.” His paintings are celebrated for their mastery of composition, perspective, and chiaroscuro, as well as their subtle psychological depth and realism.
In addition to his achievements in painting, da Vinci made groundbreaking contributions to anatomy, engineering, and scientific inquiry. He conducted pioneering studies of human anatomy, creating detailed drawings of the human body that are still studied by medical students today. He also designed innovative machines and devices, such as flying machines, armored vehicles, and hydraulic systems, that were far ahead of their time.
Da Vinci’s insatiable curiosity, boundless creativity, and relentless pursuit of knowledge have made him a symbol of the Renaissance ideal of the “universal man.” His legacy as one of the greatest geniuses in history continues to inspire and awe people around the world, reaffirming his status as an icon of human achievement.
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
01. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
02. “A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
03. “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
04. “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
05. “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
06. “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
07. “The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
08. “I love those who can smile in trouble…”
― Leonardo da Vinci
09. “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
10. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
11. “I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
12. “Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
13. “The smallest feline is a masterpiece.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
14. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
15. “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
16. “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
17. “Learning never exhausts the mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
18. “I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death”
― Leonardo da Vinci
19. “The knowledge of all things is possible”
― Leonardo da Vinci
20. “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
21. “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
22. “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
23. “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
24. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
25. “The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain”
― Leonardo da Vinci
26. “The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
27. “As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”
― Leonardo da Vinci
28. “One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.”
― Leonardo DaVinci
29. “I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
30. “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
31. “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
32. “The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
33. “The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
34. “Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”
― Leonardo DaVinci
35. “life without love, is no life at all”
― Leonardo da Vinci
36. “Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
37. “Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”
― Leonardo da Vinci
38. “An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
39. “Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
40. “Intellectual passion drives out sensuality. ”
― Leonardo DaVinci
41. “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
42. “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
43. “All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
44. “Water is the driving force in nature.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
45. “God sells us all things at the price of labor.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
46. “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
47. “Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
48. “All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
49. “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
50. “I awoke only to find that the rest of the world was still asleep.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
51. “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
52. “Our life is made by the death of others.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
53. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Water is the driving force of all nature.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
54. “once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up”
― Leonardo DaVinci
55. “My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
56. “He who thinks little errs much…”
― Leonardo da Vinci
57. “He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
58. “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
59. “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”
― Leonardo da Vinci
60. “Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
61. “He who does not oppose evil……commands it to be done.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
62. “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.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
63. “Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
64. “Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?”
― Leonardo da Vinci
65. “He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
66. “Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
67. “Wisdom is the daughter of experience”
― Leonardo da Vinci
68. “To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
69. “Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
70. “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
71. “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.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
72. “As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
73. “Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
74. “Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
75. “The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
76. “He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
77. “Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.”
― Leonardo DaVinci
78. “The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
79. “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
80. “He is a poor pupil who does not go beyond his master.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
81. “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
82. “Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
83. “The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
84. “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
85. “A well-spent day brings happy sleep”
― Leonardo da Vinci
86. “He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
87. “Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
88. “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
89. “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.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
90. “He who can copy can do.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
91. “To become an artist you have to be curious.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
92. “It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
93. “Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
94. “Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
95. “We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
96. “The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams, than the imagination awake.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
97. “Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine.
Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is
stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
98. “What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art”
― Leonardo da Vinci
99. “Men fight wars and destroy everything around them. The earth should open and swallow them up. He who does not value life does not deserve it. Never destroy another life through rage, or through malice.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
100. “The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance”
― Leonardo da Vinci
101. “A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
102. “The human bird shall take his first flight,filling the words with amazement,all writings with his fame,and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
103. “Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
104. “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
105. “The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
106. “If there’s no love, what then?”
― Leonardo da Vinci
107. “Der Augenblick ist zeitlos.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
108. “The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
109. “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
110. “In time and with water, everything changes”
― Leonardo da Vinci
111. “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
112. “كلما عظمت النفس الإنسانية ,زاد الحب عمقا”
― ليوناردو دافنشي
113. “as a well-spent day gives, joy in sleep
so a well-spent life brings, joy in dying”
― Leonardo da Vinci
114. “People of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and made things happen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
115. “Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error, in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning, will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or lesser degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
116. “He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
117. “ليس هناك ما يسمى بالمعرفة الكبرى أو المعرفة الصغرى، بل هناك نوع واحد من المعرفة وهو ذلك النوع الذى يأتى عن طريق التجريب”
― Leonardo da Vinci
118. “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
119. “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
120. “La semplicità è la sofisticazione finale.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
121. “…the love of anything is the offspring of knowledge, love being more fervent in proportion as knowledge is more certain. And this certainty springs from a complete knowledge of all parts which united compose the whole of the thing which out to be loved.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
122. “poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
123. “When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come”
― Leonardo da Vinci
124. “Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
125. “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
126. “All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
127. “Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing”
― Leonardo da Vinci
128. “It is as great an error to speak well of a worthless man as to speak ill of a good man.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
129. “For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
130. “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
131. “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
132. “Fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm”
― Leonardo da Vinci
133. “They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.”
― Leonardo Da Vinci
134. “Art is never completed, only abandoned.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
135. “Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness and Light, Solidity and Color, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
136. “Noi tutti siamo esiliati
entro lo cornici di uno strano quadro.
Chi sa questo, viva da grande,
Gli altri sono insetti.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
137. “The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
138. “The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
139. “Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
140. “Lies don’t solve problems it just make it worst …so liars beware”
― Leonardo da Vinci
141. “Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
142. “Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
143. “Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting”
― Leonardo da Vinci
144. “Hari yang dilewatkan dengan baik, akan menghasilkan tidur yang nyenyak.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
145. “I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.”
― Leonardo da vinci
146. “La decadencia llega cuando el hombre deja de fijarse en la naturaleza”
― Leonardo da Vinci
147. “a life without love, is no life at all”
― Leonard da Vinci
148. “i thought i was learning to live but i was learning to die”
― Leonardo da Vinci
149. “Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist, arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
150. “How may paintings have preserved the image of a divine beauty which in its natural manifestation has been rapidly overtaken by time or death. Thus, the work of the painter is nobler than that of nature, its mistress.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
