Powerful Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian sculptor, painter, polymath, mathematician, architect, inventor, cartographer, engineer, botanist, anatomist, geologist, writer as well as musician. He was a natural genius who crossed so many disciplines and personified the term ‘Renaissance man’. He is best known for two famous paintings “The Last Supper” and “Mona Lisa”. Below are some of his great quotes.

1. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo da Vinci
2. “Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.” - Leonardo da Vinci
3. “Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.” - Leonardo da Vinci
4. “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” - Leonardo da Vinci
5. “Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.” - Leonardo da Vinci
6. “People react to fear, not love - they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.” - Leonardo da Vinci
7. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” - Leonardo da Vinci
8. “Who sows virtue reaps honor.” - Leonardo da Vinci
9. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” - Leonardo da Vinci
10. “Nature never breaks her own laws.” - Leonardo da Vinci
11. “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
12. “Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.” - Leonardo da Vinci
13. “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” - Leonardo da Vinci
14. “Wisdom is the daughter of experience.” - Leonardo da Vinci
15. “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.” - Leonardo da Vinci
16. “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!” - Leonardo da Vinci
17. “Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.” - Leonardo da Vinci
18. “All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” - Leonardo da Vinci
19. “Truth was the only daughter of Time.” - Leonardo da Vinci
20. “Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.” - Leonardo da Vinci
21. “It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” - Leonardo da Vinci
22. “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
23. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” - Leonardo da Vinci
24. “Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art” - Leonardo da Vinci
25. “You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.” - Leonardo da Vinci
26. “The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.” - Leonardo da Vinci
27. “A well-spent day brings happy sleep” - Leonardo da Vinci
28. “It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.” - Leonardo da Vinci
29. “The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.” - Leonardo da Vinci
30. “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” - Leonardo da Vinci
31. “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” - Leonardo da Vinci
32. “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
33. “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
34. “He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year” - Leonardo da Vinci
35. “There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ’tis for some other.” - Leonardo da Vinci
36. “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.” - Leonardo da Vinci
37. “Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.” - Leonardo da Vinci
38. “Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?” - Leonardo da Vinci
39. “He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.” - Leonardo da Vinci
40. “Our life is made by the death of others.” - Leonardo da Vinci
41. “He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.” - Leonardo da Vinci
42. “Water is the driving force of all nature.” - Leonardo da Vinci
43. “Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation … even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.” - Leonardo da Vinci
44. “The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” - Leonardo da Vinci
45. “Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind.” - Leonardo da Vinci
46. “A painter was asked why, since he made such beautiful figures, which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children by night.” - Leonardo da Vinci
47. “The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.” - Leonardo da Vinci
48. “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
49. “Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: - The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.” - Leonardo da Vinci
50. “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” - Leonardo da Vinci
51. “To any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows will be of a bluish cast.” - Leonardo da Vinci
52. “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
53. “Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.” - Leonardo da Vinci
54. “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.” - Leonardo da Vinci
55. “The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.” - Leonardo da Vinci
56. “That painter who has no doubts will achieve little.” - Leonardo da Vinci
57. “As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.” - Leonardo da Vinci
58. “Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgement of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.” - Leonardo da Vinci
59. “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” - Leonardo da Vinci
60. “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that is taken in.” - Leonardo da Vinci
61. “It reflects no great honour on a painter to be able to execute one thing well.” - Leonardo da Vinci
62. “Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.” - Leonardo da Vinci
63. “Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.” - Leonardo da Vinci
64. “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
65. “The painter’s mind is a copy of the divine mind, since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.” - Leonardo da Vinci

Above were few of the popular quotes by Leonardo da Vinci. If you have more of his quotes do share in the comments section.