The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci

Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going

We know very well that errors are better recognised in the works of others than in our own; and that often, while reproving little faults in others, you may ignore great ones in yourself

The sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work.

The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.

Life if well spent, is long.

The sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work.

own work. And if you are not conscious

. For so much more worthy as the soul is than the body.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

For so much more worthy as the soul is than the body.

I know that many will call this useless work, and they will be those of whom Demetrius declared that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts: men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind.