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Leonardo da Vinci: Drawn portraitDrawn portraitAttributed to Francesco Melzi; colour-corrected reproduction · Public domain

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Leonardo da Vinci

Life dates: 1452 AD — 1519 AD

Artist and observer whose notebooks connect looking, drawing and inquiry into nature. These archive passages come from a 1906 English selection of his notes, not a continuous philosophical book composed by Leonardo.

Source editions and anthology attributions are not the same evidence level. Read the selection standard ↗

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗lifedeathknowledgelovewisdomworkwealthmind

Life and writing

Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. Drawing was central to his investigation of the visible world: observations of bodies, movement and natural forms could become studies for art as well as records of inquiry. His surviving notes and drawings show a practice in which looking closely and asking how something works often belonged to the same activity.

The notebooks preserve working material rather than a single finished argument, including inquiries into different subjects. Thoughts on Art and Life arranges selected passages in a later English edition, translated by Maurice Baring and edited by Lewis Einstein. Reading each complete numbered selection with its section title helps distinguish reflections on knowledge from practical instructions or a historical scientific claim.

Reading this voice

Begin with a passage about knowledge or observation, then explore the Life, Art and Science sections of the same source edition. A memorable image is not evidence that a historical scientific claim is correct. The 1906 selection and translation postdate Leonardo’s life; its unit numbers belong to that edition. The archive’s approximate 1486 coordinate is his lifetime midpoint, not a date attached to the words.

Subjects to explore

knowledgenaturelearningmind

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Profile sources and editorial notes

Agent-assisted editorial profile, updated 2026-10-04. A human reviewer is not recorded. Biographical context does not independently authenticate every quotation attributed to this person.

Quotations and sayings

01c. 1486 AD
i. No very light object is opaque. ii. Nothing light can remain beneath that which is heavier. iii. Whether the moon is the centre of its elements or not. And if it has no fixed position like the earth in the centre of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? And if the moon is not in the centre of its elements and does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. And if the moon is lighter than the other elements, why is it opaque and not transparent?
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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06c. 1486 AD
First of all define the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star exists really in the eye, and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays of the stars are born in the eye. Say, that if the twinkling of the stars were, as it appears to be, really in the stars, that this twinkling appears to extend in proportion to the body of the star. The star, therefore, being larger than the earth, this motion made in an instant of time would in its velocity double the size of the star. Then prove that the surface of the atmosphere, contiguous to fire and the surface of fire, where it ends, is the point in which the rays of the sun penetrate and bear the image of the celestial bodies which are large when they rise and set, and small when they are on the meridian.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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09c. 1486 AD
Nothing is generated in a place where is no sentient vegetable and rational life; feathers grow on birds and change every year; coats grow on animals and are changed every year, with some exceptions, like the lion's beard and the cat's fur, and such; grass grows in the fields and leaves on the trees; and every year they are renewed in great part. Thus we can say that the spirit of growth is the soul of the earth, the soil its flesh, the ordered arrangement of rocks its bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals and volcanoes, as at Mount Etna in Sicily and in many other places.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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10c. 1486 AD
The ancients called man the world in miniature, and certainly the name is a happy one, because man being composed of earth, water, air and fire, the body of the earth resembles the body of man. As man has in him bones for the support and framework of his flesh, likewise in the world the rocks are the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in their breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed; as from the aforesaid pool of blood veins issue which ramify throughout the human body, so does the ocean fill the body of the earth with innumerable veins of water. The body of the earth lacks sinews, which do not exist because sinews are made for movement, and the world being in perpetual stability no movement occurs, and there being no movement, sinews are not necessary; but in all other points they resemble each other greatly.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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16c. 1486 AD
The water which rises in the mountains is the blood which keeps the mountain alive, and through this conduit or vein, nature, the helper of her creatures, prompt in the desire to repair the loss of the moisture expended, proffers the desired aid abundantly; just as in a stricken spot in man you will see, owing to the aid which is brought, the blood abound under the skin in a swelling, so as to succour the spot which has been stricken; likewise, in the case of the vine, when it is cut at its extremity, nature causes its moisture to rise from the lowest root to the end of the extremity which has been cut, and when this moisture has been expended nature ceases not to supply it with vital moisture to the end of its life.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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19c. 1486 AD
Rivers, with their ruinous inundations, seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it. The flowing of water, which is maintained by sloping valleys, ends and dies at the lowest depth of the valley; but fire is caused by fuel and the movement of water by incline. The fuel of fire is disunited, and its damage is disunited and isolated, and fire dies where there is no fuel. The incline of valleys is united, and damage caused by water is collective, along with the ruinous course of the river, until with its valley it winds into the sea, the universal base and sole haven of the wandering waters of rivers. But what voice or words shall I find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? What can I say? Certainly I do not feel myself equal to such a demonstration, yet by experience I will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion can prevail.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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22c. 1486 AD
The subterranean courses of water, like those which are made between the air and the earth, are those which continually consume and deepen the beds of their currents. The earth which is carried by rivers is discharged at the end of their course, that is to say, the earth carried from the highest part of the river's course is discharged at the lowest depth of its course. Where fresh water arises in the sea, the miracle of the creation of an island is manifest, which will be discovered sooner or later in proportion as the quantity of water is greater or less. And an island of this kind is formed by the deposit of earth and stones made by the subterranean current of water in the channels through which it passes.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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