Leonardo da Vinci

"The great bird will take its first flight from the back of the Great Swan."

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."

"He who truly knows himself, knows all things."

"To understand the thing, you must understand the parts; to understand the parts, you must understand the whole."

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."

"The painter's mind should be like a mirror which always takes the color of the thing that it reflects."

"You can have anything you want if you sacrifice everything for it."

"Darkness is not the absence of light, but the absence of understanding."

"The greatest achievement is selflessness."

"Anger is the only thing to which we should yield without resistance."

"When the bird takes flight, it leaves no path behind."

"Every action is a mirror upon which every human being must look at themselves."

"The eye is the master of astronomy; the ear is the master of music."

"In order to arrive at the highest truths of life, one must understand what creates a human soul."

"The walls of a room create the mood; the mood shapes the mind."

"Everybody in the world loves something and desires something."

"The human body is water; the human soul is fire."

"Wherefore I wonder, if you were to die tomorrow, you would have lived a complete life."

"The serpent, the symbol of medicine, sheds its skin to grow new flesh."

"All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came except that which is embedded in the heart."

"It is not enough to know things; one must use them."

"The painter who draws by rote and practice of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror."

"Know thyself, and thou shalt know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe."

"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."

"To love is to work with the divine hand."

"The sign of a true genius is that everyone who comes after him becomes his debtor."

"Gold is not something one obtains; it is something one becomes."

"In the middle of winter, I at last discovered there was in me an invincible summer."

"A man is not entirely free when his thoughts are still enslaved."

"Reading all good books is like having a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."