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 Quote

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

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

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.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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

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 Quote

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Nature never breaks her own laws.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Who sows virtue reaps honor.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
- Leonardo da Vinci Quote