Thoughts on Art and Life Quotes

“as a well-spent day gives, joy in sleep
so a well-spent life brings, joy in dying”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“There will come a time when men look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of God it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“No counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“fr shawty”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Further than this, influenced by Platonic thought, Leonardo's conception of painting was, as an intellectual state or condition, outwardly projected. The painter who practised his art without reasoning of its nature was like a mirror unconsciously reflecting what was before it. Although without a "manual act" painting could not be realized, its true problems—problems of light, of colour, pose and composition, of primitive and derivative shadow—had all to be grasped by the mind without bodily labour. Beyond this, the scientific foundation in art came through making it rest upon an accurate knowledge of nature. Even experience was only a step towards attaining this.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“The Italian Renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed in the life-work of a single man. He represented its union of practice and theory, of thought placed in the service of action. He summed up its different aspects in his own individuality. Intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from experience, extended into every sphere. As an artist he possessed a vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty. But, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. His very limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority of art to nationality, are all characteristic of Renaissance Italy.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. In his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which Italians found opportunity beyond the Alps, since in Italy it was denied them; and Titian found even Venice too narrow for the scope of his art.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Raphael, on the other hand, found only beautiful sweetness everywhere. The tragedies of life failed to touch the young painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the sensuous beauty of the world. There was another side to the Renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet sharing in both through qualities of its own.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“In Michelangelo was realized the grandeur of Italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“But the noblest painters,—Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Leonardo,—in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation's life and civilization.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“The search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. The keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. That mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. He denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,—alchemy and the black art.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“Nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience." He conceived it to be the painter's duty not only to comment on natural phenomena as restrained by law, but to merge his very mind into that of nature by interpreting its relation with art.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

“reality the fancy of his dreams, and give outward expression to the ideal within.”
― Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life