Inspirational Quotes by Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Inspirational Quotations by Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519,) fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, was a prolific Italian painter, sculptor, scientist, engineer, inventor, and polymath. This great Italian Renaissance genius of art and science is often regarded as history’s most creative genius.

The man who painted the celebrated portrait “Mona Lisa” (1504–05) and the renowned mural “The Last Supper” (1498) was a fountainhead of inquiry and creativity in anatomy, mechanics, art, gravity, optics, music, birds, flying machines, geology, weaponry, the human heart. He reached across the disciplines of science, art, humanities, and technology like no one before and few since.

Born in the village of Anchiano near the Tuscan town of Vinci, Leonardo was the illicit son of a Florentine notary and a peasant girl. He apprenticed as a sculptor and painter before he moved to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter, and architect. Subsequently, he lived in Florence, Rome, and France.

Leonardo ‘invented’ the bicycle, the airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years before their time. He articulated his science through his art—his scrupulously observed sketches in 3,500 pages of his nineteen notebooks show what he represented, and how he understood the world to work.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Leonardo da Vinci

Who sows virtue reaps honor.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Virtue, Honor

When you are alone you are all your own.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Self-Discovery

Common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Common Sense

Just as courage imperils life; fear protects it.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Fear, Anxiety

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

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Experience

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Experience, Wisdom

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Education

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
—Leonardo da Vinci

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Happiness, Death, Dying

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man’s mind.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Painters, Painting, Art

The greater a man’s soul, the deeper he loves.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Nature

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
—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
Topics: Thinking, Action

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Beginning

Every now and then go away, even briefly. Have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Although human subtlety makes a variety of inventions by different means to the same end, it 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
Topics: Nature

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: One liners, Wisdom, Wealth, Rich, Patience

He turns not back who is bound to a star.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Goals, Resolve, Aspirations, Perseverance, Commitment, Dedication, Endurance

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Topics: Deception