Leonardo da Vinci quotes for UPSC

You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.

Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master.

A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one.

Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead:—The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.

Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

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

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

Truth was the only daughter of Time.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.

Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

He who does not value life does not deserve it.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.

While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.

As a day well spent makes sleep seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long.

That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired.

The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.

He who offends others, does not secure himself.

The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.