Famous Quotes & Sayings

Leonardo da Vinci

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature alone is the master of true genius.

Leonardo da Vinci

Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.

Leonardo da Vinci

Every action done by nature is done in the shortest way.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwell inborn in her. Variant: Nature is constrained by the order of her own law which lives and works within her.

Leonardo da Vinci

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.

Leonardo da Vinci

Very great charm of shadow and light is to be found in the faces of those who sit in the doors of dark houses. The eye of the spectator sees that part of the face which is in shadow lost in the darkness of the house, and that part of the face which is lit draws its brilliancy from the splendour of the sky. From this intensification of light and shade the face gains greatly in relief and beauty by showing the subtlest shadows in the light part and the subtlest lights in the dark part.

Leonardo da Vinci

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

Leonardo da Vinci

Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting.

Leonardo da Vinci

I say that the power of vision extends through the visual rays to the surface of non-transparent bodies, while the power possessed by these bodies extends to the power of vision.

Leonardo da Vinci

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.

Leonardo da Vinci

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

Leonardo da Vinci

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Leonardo da Vinci

... we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.

Oscar Wilde

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

Oscar Wilde

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.

Paul Gauguin

I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.

Paul Gauguin

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Patch Adams

Nature tops the list of potent tranquilizers and stress reducers. The mere sound of moving water has been shown to lower blood pressure.

Pam Brown

For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I can pass days Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees, Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,-- The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs, Each tree a natural harp,--each different leaf A different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving.

Leon Trotsky

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself.

Leigh Hunt

Nature, at all events, humanly speaking, is manifestly very fond of color; for she has made nothing without it. Her skies are blue; her fields, green; her waters vary with her skies; her animals, vegetables, minerals, are all colored. She paints a great any of them in apparently superfluous hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color.

Mikhail Lermontov

In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our age is one of guided missiles and unguided men.

Mark Jenkins

Kids are natural little outdoor people. It is we, the adults, who turn them into indoor people. If you don't get of fyour computer, why should they?

Mark Jenkins

Stop worrying about whether they can handle it. You want the truth? Your kid is hardier than you are... Kids are tough.

Mark Jenkins

Give your kids responsibility. Once outside, let them lead, who cares if you get lost; it might be the best trip you've ever had.

Neil Armstrong

Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny.

Naomi Klein

Our problem is that the climate crisis hatched in our laps at a moment in history when political and social conditions were uniquely hostile to a problem of this nature and magnitude-that moment being the tail end of the go-go '80s, the blastoff point for the crusade to spread deregulated capitalism around the world. Climate change is a collective problem demanding collective action the likes of which humanity has never actually accomplished. Yet it entered mainstream consciousness in the midst of an ideological war being waged on the very idea of the collective sphere.

R. D. Laing

We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.