Quote

I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not 'singular' or 'distant,' or whatever you like to call him.

Leonardo da Vinci

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Leonardo da Vinci
Age: 67 †
Born: 1452
Born: April 15
Died: 1519
Died: May 2
Anatomist
Architect
Astronomer
Botanist
Caricaturist
Chemist
Civil Engineer
Composer
Diplomat
Engineer
Inventor
Mathematician
Musician
Excellence
Affirm
Ignorant
Singular
Call
Satisfy
Whatever
Attain
Cannot
Venture
Would
Distant
Men
Craft
Like
Crafts

More quotes by Leonardo da Vinci

Image
As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Experiment is the sole interpreter of the artifices of Nature.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
If a man has a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and be it twelve bracchia across (over twenty-five feet) and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining injury. [His concept of the parachute.]
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not refuse to hear any man's opinion... Since men are able to form a true judgement as to the works of nature, how much more does it behoove us to admit that they are able to judge our faults.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Wisdom is the daughter of experience
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Good culture is born of a good disposition and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Lying on a feather mattress or quilt will not bring you renown.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it while it never was theirs nor in their power and human justice will not prevent it.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Not to appreciate life, all of life, is not to deserve it.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.
Leonardo da Vinci
Image
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain
Leonardo da Vinci