Quote

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

Leonardo da Vinci

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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
Judge
Judging
Poetry
Painting
Words
Facts
Presentation
Reason
Superior
Superiors

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He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.
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We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.
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Obstacles cannot bend me. Every obstacle yields to effort.
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Tears come from the heart and not from the brain
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When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.
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Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
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If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.
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Poor is the man who desires a lot
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If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it
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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.
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In her (nature's) inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
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The boundaries of bodies are the least of all things.
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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?
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If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.
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When you draw a nude, sketch the whole figure and nicely fit the members to it and to each other. Even though you may only finish one portion of the drawing, just make certain that all the parts hang together, so that the study will be useful to you in the future.
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Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.
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Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
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I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air.
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All our knowledge originates in opinion.
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Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.
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