These Leonardo da Vinci quotes will blow your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci was known as the “universal genius”. He was an Italian Renaissance polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography.
What William Shakespeare is to literature, da Vinci is to painting. He left behind a rich legacy of paintings, including the greatest ever art produced on canvas, ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘The Last Supper’ and ‘The Vitruvian Man’.
But art alone couldn’t satisfy Leonardo’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge of his surroundings, so he also studied the laws of science and nature.
A lot of Leonardo’s ideas and inventions are captured in notebooks that prove his thinking and inventiveness were way ahead of the times he lived.
Some historians regarded him a ‘superhuman’ for no other man without superhuman qualities can claim to have such a daunting influence and expertise over a wide range of different subject areas.
The iconic Leonardo da Vinci inspired countless minds during his lifetime and his powerful legacy continues to live on.
I’ve put together the best Leonardo da Vinci quotes that cover various aspects of life and will inspire you to follow your passions. Enjoy!
77 Famous Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
1. “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
2. “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
3. “Life without love, is no life at all.” – Leonardo da Vinci
4. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
5. “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci
6. “Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.” – Leonardo da Vinci
7. “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” – Leonardo da Vinci
8. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci
9. “The knowledge of all things is possible.” – Leonardo da Vinci
10. “As you cannot do what you want, want what you can do.” – Leonardo da Vinci
11. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” – Leonardo da Vinci
12. “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 da Vinci
13. “All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.” – Leonardo da Vinci
14. “He who thinks little errs much.” – Leonardo da Vinci
15. “He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci
16. “Realize that everything connects to everything else.” – Leonardo da Vinci
17. “Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.” – Leonardo da Vinci
18. “Once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up.” – Leonardo da Vinci
19. “Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.” – Leonardo da Vinci
20. “Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?” – Leonardo da Vinci
21. “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” – Leonardo da Vinci
22. “Wisdom is the daughter of experience.” – Leonardo da Vinci
23. “He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.” – Leonardo da Vinci
24. “In time and with water, everything changes.” – Leonardo da Vinci
25. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” – Leonardo da Vinci
26. “Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.” – Leonardo da Vinci
27. “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” – Leonardo da Vinci
28. “One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.” – Leonardo da Vinci
29. “Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.” – Leonardo da Vinci
30. “There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.” – Leonardo da Vinci
31. “A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.” – Leonardo da Vinci
32. “Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.” – Leonardo da Vinci
33. “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
34. “One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature.” – Leonardo da Vinci
35. “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.” – Leonardo da Vinci
36. “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” – Leonardo da Vinci
37. “The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain.” – Leonardo da Vinci
38. “He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.” – Leonardo da Vinci
39. “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
40. “He who does not oppose evil, commands it to be done.” – Leonardo da Vinci
41. “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
42. “Who sows virtue reaps honor.” – Leonardo da Vinci
43. “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
44. “Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.” – Leonardo da Vinci
45. “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. Open your eyes.” – Leonardo da Vinci
46. “Nature never breaks her own laws.” – Leonardo da Vinci
47. “Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.” – Leonardo da Vinci
48. “Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.” – Leonardo da Vinci
49. “For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.” – Leonardo da Vinci
50. “Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.” – Leonardo da Vinci
51. “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
52. “The natural desire of good men is knowledge.” – Leonardo da Vinci
53. “Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.” – Leonardo da Vinci
54. “As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.” – Leonardo da Vinci
55. “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
56. “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
57. “All thoughts start from emotions.” – Leonardo da Vinci
58. “Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.” – Leonardo da Vinci
59. “Be a mirror, absorb everything around you and still remain the same.” – Leonardo da Vinci
60. “Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!” – Leonardo da Vinci
61. “I am not poor. Poor are those who desire many things.” – Leonardo da Vinci
62. “A diamond is just a lump of coal that stuck to its job.” – Leonardo da Vinci
63. “Man’s external form, marvellously constructed, is not much as compared with the divine soul that dwells inside that structure.” – Leonardo da Vinci
64. “Learning is the only thing that never disappoints us.” – Leonardo da Vinci
65. “Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.” – Leonardo da Vinci
66. “Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.” – Leonardo da Vinci
67. “Whoever does not respect life, does not deserve it.” – Leonardo da Vinci
68. “To be a winner you must want to win but must know of the chance of losing and must not fear of it.” – Leonardo da Vinci
69. “Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.” – Leonardo da Vinci
70. “An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength.” – Leonardo da Vinci
71. “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
72. “He who can copy can do.” – Leonardo da Vinci
73. “One can have no more mastery over the environment, than one has over himself.” – Leonardo da Vinci
74. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci
75. “The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.” – Leonardo da Vinci
76. “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” – Leonardo da Vinci
77. “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
Did you find these quotes by Leonardo da Vinci inspiring?
What are your favourite Leonardo da Vinci quotes? Let me know in the comments and please share this post to help and inspire others.
