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.
Leonardo da Vinci

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

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.
Leonardo da Vinci

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
Leonardo da Vinci

Learning never exhausts the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

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.
Leonardo da Vinci

Life well spent is long.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

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

Nature never breaks her own laws.
Leonardo da Vinci

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
Leonardo da Vinci

Our life is made by the death of others.
Leonardo da Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Leonardo da Vinci

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Leonardo da Vinci

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.
Leonardo da Vinci

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci