da Vinci, Leonardo (1452 – 1519), Italian engineer, painter & sculptor
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.
Intellectual passion dries out sensuality.
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure what you do not understand.
Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occasion of folly.
