Leonardo da Vinci

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surroun...”

“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”