All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Realize that everything connects to everything else.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
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.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, ridiculous, or truly pitiable, he is lord and God thereof.
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.
As iron rusts when not used, and water gets foul from standing or turns to ice when exposed to cold, so the intellect degenerates without exercise.-Leonard Da Vinci
Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public.
The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art
I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.
Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death
Human subtlety 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.
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.
The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.
No counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger.
Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness and Light, Solidity and Color, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.
Fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm
Oh Lord thou givest us everything at the price of an effort.
The common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
Obstacles cannot crush me every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
A good painter is to paint two main things namely men and the working of man’s mind.
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence he is just using his memory.
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
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.
A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.