Leonardo da Vinci

17 posts

Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci

Still sketching flying machines, eddies, muscles, and whatever else catches the eye.

Leonardo da Vinci
·1490·Milan

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.

Leonardo da Vinci
·1505·Florence

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

Leonardo da Vinci
·1500·Venice

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Leonardo da Vinci
·1495·Milan

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

Georges Méliès — A Trip to the Moon
14:33
Film · Star Film Company

A Trip to the Moon

Georges Méliès

1902

Leonardo da Vinci
·1512·Amboise

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Leonardo da Vinci

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

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

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.

Leonardo da Vinci

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.

Leonardo da Vinci

O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.

Leonardo da Vinci

That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.