Leonardo da Vinci moved through art and invention with a mind trained by observation, patience, and wonder. These quotations are a small window into his way of seeing, where perception becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes craft. In his own words: “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.”
If you’d like the full celebration page, visit Spirit of Inventiveness, and for the quiet roots of geometric clarity behind so much Renaissance seeing, meet Euclid.

A painter above all must keep his mind as clear as the surface of a mirror.

Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does in action spoil the intellect.

A well spent day brings happy sleep.

After forty years, a man is responsible for his face.

An arch is two weaknesses which together make a strength.

There can be no greater or lesser mastery than over oneself.

I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.

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

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.

He turns not back who is bound to a star.

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

Vows begin when hope dies.

Painting is born of nature.

All our knowledge has its origins in perceptions.

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you.

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

The sea is the universal mirror and unique resting place of the wandering waters of the river.

The tendency of every heavy body is to make its center the center of the earth.