Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Leonardo da Vinci Painter

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: Republic of Florence
  • Born: Apr 15, 1452
  • Died: May 2, 1519

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.

Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Verrocchio.

Life well spent is long.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

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

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.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

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

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

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

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence he is just using his memory.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.