Leonardo da Vinci

“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.”

“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.”

“It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite.”

“Fa vini potenti e assai, … e ‘l vino vale el più uno soldo il boccale e la libbra della vitella un soldo e ‘l sale 10 dinari, e ‘l simile il burro, ed è la loro libbra 30 once, e l’ova un soldo la soldata. (Modern Italian)”

“Subito salse in me due cose: paura e desiderio: paura per la minacciante e scura spelonca, desiderio per vedere se là entro fusse alcuna miracolosa cosa. (Ancient Italian)”

“truovasi di miglio i(n) miglio bone osteriee. (Ancient Italian)”

“3 miglia più in là si trova li edifici della vena del rame e dello argento, presso una terra detta Pra Santo Petro e vene di ferro e cose fantastiche. (Ancient Italian)”

“Tristo è quel discepolo che non avanza il suo maestro. (Modern Italian)”

“Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.”

“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.”

“Ivy is of longevity.”

“One's thoughts turn towards Hope.”

“Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.”

“Chi poco pensa, molto erra.”

“O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.”

“Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.”

“One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.”

“Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles...”

“Love, Fear, and Esteem, — Write these on three stones.”

“Of the horse I will say nothing because I know the times.”

“Chi non punisce il male comanda che si faccia.”

“The city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its aggrandizement.”

“They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness.”

“Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another.”