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Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

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"People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true."

"Human subtelty 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."
Nature

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
Death

"The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species."

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

"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."
Art

"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death."

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."

"Who sows virtue reaps honor."

"The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things."

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."

"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."

"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand."

"Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel."

"The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."

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