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The collection / 675 fragments

Time.

Explore passages mentioning time, hour. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.

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01Undated
1. The government that seems the most unwise, Oft goodness to the people best supplies; That which is meddling, touching everything, Will work but ill, and disappointment bring. Misery!—happiness is to be found by its side! Happiness!—misery lurks beneath it! Who knows what either will come to in the end? 2. Shall we then dispense with correction? The (method of) correction shall by a turn become distortion, and the good in it shall by a turn become evil. The delusion of the people (on this point) has indeed subsisted for a long time. 3. Therefore the sage is (like) a square which cuts no one (with its angles); (like) a corner which injures no one (with its sharpness). He is straightforward, but allows himself no license; he is bright, but does not dazzle.
Laozi (traditional attribution) / quote
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04c. 1486 AD
O mighty and once living instrument of creative nature, unable to avail thyself of thy great strength thou must needs abandon a life of tranquillity and obey the law which God and time gave to Nature the mother. Ah! how often the frighted shoals of dolphins and great tunny fish were seen fleeing before thy inhuman wrath; whilst thou, fulminating with swift beating of wings and twisted tail, raised in the sea a sudden storm with buffeting and sinking of ships and tossing of waves, filling the naked shores with terrified and distracted fishes.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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05c. 1486 AD
Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. And as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the increasing multitude and congregation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause, there would follow no effect. This earth, therefore, seeks to lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as, by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their causes, animals are the image of the life of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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06c. 1486 AD
Although time is included among continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial it does not altogether fall into the scope of geometry,—by which it is divided into figures and bodies of infinite variety, which are seen to be continuous inasmuch as they are visible and material,—but it agrees only with its first principles, i.e. with the point and the line; the point in time may be compared to an instant, and the line to the length of a certain quantity of time. Just as the point is the beginning and end of a line, so is an instant the beginning and end of any given space of time; and just as a line is infinitely divisible, so can a given space of time be likewise divided, and as the divisions of the line are in proportion to each other, so likewise are the divisions of time.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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07c. 1486 AD
How by the aid of a machine many may remain for some time under water. And how and why I do not describe my method of remaining under water and of living long without food; and I do not publish nor divulge these things by reason of the evil nature of man, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea and to destroy and sink ships, together with the men on board of them; and notwithstanding I will teach other things which are not dangerous....
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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08c. 1486 AD
I will not dwell on false physiognomy and chiromancy because there is no truth in them, and this is manifest because chimeras of this kind have no scientific foundation. It is true that the lineaments of the face partly reveal the character of men, their vices and temperaments; but in the face: (a) the features which separate the cheeks from the lips, and the nostrils and cavities of the eyes, are strongly marked if they belong to cheerful and good-humoured men, and if they are slightly marked it denotes that the men to whom they belong are given to meditation, (b) Those whose features stand out in great relief and depth are brutal and bad-tempered, and reason little, (c) Those who have strongly marked lines between the eyebrows are bad-tempered, (d) Those who have strongly marked lines on the forehead are men full of concealed or unconcealed bewailing. And we can reason thus about many features. But the hand? You will find that whole armies perished in the same hour by the sword in which no two men had similar marks in their hands, and the same argument applies to a shipwreck.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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13c. 1486 AD
Poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account I consider painting to be superior to poetry. But since those who practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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14c. 1486 AD
Painting reveals itself immediately to thee with the semblance given it by its creator, and affords to the chief of the senses as great a delight as any object created by nature. And the poet in this case reveals the same objects to the brain by the channel of the hearing, the inferior sense, and affords the eye no more pleasure than it derives from anything which is related. Now consider what a difference there is between hearing the recital of a thing which in the course of time gives pleasure to the eye, and perceiving it with the same velocity with which we apprehend the works of nature. And in addition to the fact that a long interval of time is necessary to read the works of the poets, it often occurs that they are not understood, and it is necessary to make diverse comments on them, and it is exceedingly rare that the commentators are agreed as to the meaning of the poet; and often the readers peruse but a small portion of their works, owing to lack of time. But the works of the painter are immediately understood by those who behold them.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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15c. 1486 AD
Music should be given no other name than the sister of painting, inasmuch as it is subject to the hearing,—a sense inferior to the eye,—and it produces harmony by the unison of its proportioned parts, which are brought into operation at the same moment and are constrained to come to life and die in one or more harmonic times; and time is, as it were, the circumference of the parts which constitute the harmony, in the same way as the outline constitutes the circumference of limbs whence human beauty emanates. But painting excels and lords over music because it does not die as soon as it is born, as occurs with music, the less fortunate; on the contrary, it continues to exist and reveals itself to be what it is, a single surface. O marvellous science, thou givest lasting life to the perished beauty of mortals, which are thus made more enduring than the works of nature, for these undergo forever the changes of time, and time leads them to inevitable old age! And this science is to divine nature as its works are to the works of nature, and on this account it is worshipped.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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17c. 1486 AD
I have been to see a variety of cloud effects, and lately over Milan towards Lake Maggiore I saw a cloud in the form of a huge mountain full of fiery scales, because the rays of the sun, which was already reddening and close to the horizon, tinged the cloud with its own colour. And this cloud attracted to it all the lesser clouds which were around it; and the great cloud did not move from its place, but on the contrary retained on its summit the light of the sun till an hour and a half after nightfall, such was its immense size; and about two hours after nightfall a great, an incredibly tremendous wind arose.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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19c. 1486 AD
Measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in twenty-four hours. And thus we can see whether Epicurus was correct in saying the sun was only as large as it appeared to be; for as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as the sun would go a thousand times into its course in twenty-four hours, it would have travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. Thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five arms' length in an hour.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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20c. 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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21c. 1486 AD
It several bodies of equal weight and shape are dropped one after another at equal intervals of time, the distances between each successive body will be equally increased. The experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: Take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. This experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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22c. 1486 AD
We know definitely that sight is infinitely swift and in an instant of time perceives countless shapes, nevertheless it only sees one object at a time. Let us take an example. You, O reader, will see the whole of this written page at a glance, and you will instantly realize that it is full of various letters, but you will not realize at that moment what these letters are nor what they signify; wherefore you will have to proceed word by word and line by line to take cognizance of these letters. Again, if you wish to reach the summit of a building you must mount step by step, otherwise it will be impossible for you to reach the summit. And therefore I say to you whom nature has drawn to this art, if you wish to attain to a thorough knowledge of the forms of objects, you will begin by studying the details, and not proceed to the second until you have committed the first to memory and mastered it in practice, and if you do otherwise you will be wasting your time and protracting your studies. And remember first of all to acquire diligence, which signifies speed.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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23c. 1486 AD
If the water which rises on the summits of the mountains comes from the sea, whence it is propelled by its weight to a greater height than that of the mountains, why has this portion of the element of water the power to elevate itself to such an altitude and to penetrate the earth by so great an expenditure of labour and time, when the residue of the element of water, whose only obstacle is the air which does not impede it, is not able to raise itself to a similar altitude? And thou who didst devise this theory, go and study nature, so that thou mayst cease to acquire such opinions of which thou hast made so great a collection, together with the capital and interest which thou dost possess.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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24c. 1486 AD
O time! swift devourer of all created things! How many kings, how many nations, thou hast overthrown, how great changes of kingdoms and diverse vicissitudes have succeeded one another, since the marvellous body of this fish, which perished in the caverns and intricate recesses [of the mountain]. Now undone by time, thou liest patient in this confined spot; with thy fleshless and bare bones thou hast built the framework and the support of the mountain that is above thee.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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