Water is the driver of nature.
Water is the driver of nature.
Proportion is not only to be found in figures and measurements, but also in sound, weight, time and position, and in whatever power which exists.
Small rooms or dwellings help the mind to concentrate itself; large rooms are a source of distraction.
#davinci Thoughts on Art and Life
Note that I skipped a whole tonne of Da Vinci’s longer notes, which can be summarised as: “painting is great, poetry is rubbish, music and sculpture are somewhere in between”.
The water you touch in a river is that last of that which has gone, and the first of that which is coming: so it is with time present.
A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.
Man discourtheth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.
There is nothing which deceives us as much as out own judgement.
All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.
Truth was the only daughter of time.
Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.
Bountiful nature has provided that in all parts of the world you will find something to imitate
The intellect will always profit by the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is useless will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful will remain. It is impossible either to hate or to love a thing without first acquiring knowledge of it.
Avoid studies the result of which will die together with him who studied.
So, today is (sort of) Leonardo Da Vinci’s birthday. I consider him to be a pioneer of the note content type (AKA somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, usually with no title). So, to celebrate his birthday, I’m going to be posting some of his (translated) notes from Thoughts on Art and Life.
The source text I’m using is the gutenberg txt translation.