The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by
Leonardo da Vinci.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
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.
He who thinks little, errs much.
We ought not to desire the impossible.
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
He who walks straight rarely falls.
Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.
The acquisition of any 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.
Truth was the only daughter of Time.
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art.
Fear arises sooner than anything else.
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.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death.
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.
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.
