Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
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.
Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
He who wishes to be rich within a day, will be hanged within a year.
Why does the eye see more clearly when asleep than the imagination when awake?
Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
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.
Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
He who does not oppose evil......commands it to be done.
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
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.
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
He who thinks little errs much…
My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.
Our life is made by the death of others.
A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
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. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
God sells us all things at the price of labor.
Water is the driving force in nature.
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.
Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.
Time stays long enough for those who use it.