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The voices / 391 fragments

Leonardo da Vinci

1452 AD — 1519 AD

Artist and observer whose notebooks connect looking, drawing and inquiry into nature. These archive passages come from a 1906 English selection of his notes, not a continuous philosophical book composed by Leonardo.

Author and source reference ↗
▷ Play this voiceSearch within this voice ↗Place in time ↗timenaturelifedeathknowledgelovewisdomwork
Works identified in the source

Life and writing

Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. Drawing was central to his investigation of the visible world: observations of bodies, movement and natural forms could become studies for art as well as records of inquiry. His surviving notes and drawings show a practice in which looking closely and asking how something works often belonged to the same activity.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519 ↗ Metropolitan Museum essay: lifetime, observation and drawing as investigation

The notebooks preserve working material rather than a single finished argument, including inquiries into different subjects. Thoughts on Art and Life arranges selected passages in a later English edition, translated by Maurice Baring and edited by Lewis Einstein. Reading each complete numbered selection with its section title helps distinguish reflections on knowledge from practical instructions or a historical scientific claim.

Victoria and Albert Museum — Leonardo’s notebooks ↗Project Gutenberg — Thoughts on Art and Life, PG 29904 ↗ V&A notebooks overview; checked 1906 selection and original editorial reading guidance

Reading this voice

Begin with a passage about knowledge or observation, then explore the Life, Art and Science sections of the same source edition. A memorable image is not evidence that a historical scientific claim is correct. The 1906 selection and translation postdate Leonardo’s life; its unit numbers belong to that edition. The archive’s approximate 1486 coordinate is his lifetime midpoint, not a date attached to the words.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

knowledgenaturelearningmind

A work to read

Begin with these archive passages

Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-04. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.

Archive entries

01c. 1486 AD
Not louder does the tempestuous sea bellow when the north wind strikes its foaming waves between Scylla and Charybdis; nor Stromboli nor Mount Etna when the sulphurous flames, shattering and bursting open the great mountain with violence, hurl stones and earth through the air with the flame it vomits; nor when the fiery caverns of Mount Etna, spitting forth the element which it cannot restrain, hurl it back to the place whence it issued, driving furiously before it any obstacle in the way of its vehement fury ... so I, urged by my great desire and longing to see the blending of strange and various shapes made by creating nature, wandered for some time among the dark rocks, and came to the entrance of a great cave, in front of which I long stood in astonishment and ignorance of such a thing. I bent my back into an arch and rested my left hand on my knee, and with my right hand shaded my downcast eyes and contracted eyebrows. I bent down first on one side and then on the other to see whether I could perceive anything, but the thick darkness rendered this impossible; and after having remained there some time, two things arose within me, fear and desire,—fear of the dark and threatening cave, desire to see whether there were anything marvellous within.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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03c. 1486 AD
Recognizing as I do that I cannot make use of subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, I shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. I shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and I shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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09c. 1486 AD
I know that many will say that this work is useless, and these are they of whom Demetrius said recked no more of the breath which made the words proceed from their mouth, than of the wind which proceeded from their body,—men who seek solely after riches and bodily satisfaction, men entirely denuded of that wisdom which is the food and verily the wealth of the soul; because insomuch as the soul is of greater value than the body, so much greater are the riches of the soul than those of the body. And often when I see one of these take this work in his hand, I wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me if it is something to eat.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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11c. 1486 AD
I do not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. They merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they cannot be considered otherwise than as vehicles for food, for they seem to me to have nothing in common with the human race save the shape and the voice; as far as the rest is concerned they are lower than the beasts.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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13c. 1486 AD
Cornelius Celsus: Knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is physical pain. We are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser. Knowledge appertains to the greater part, the supreme evil belongs to the lesser and baser part. Knowledge is an excellent thing for the mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. Just as the supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be compared with it.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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15c. 1486 AD
The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains. Far greater is the glory of the virtue of mortals than that of their riches. How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting. How many were those who lived in scarcity of worldly goods in order to grow rich in virtue; and as far as virtue exceeds wealth, even in the same degree the desire of the poor man proved more fruitful than that of the rich man. Dost thou not see that wealth in itself confers no honour on him who amasses it, which shall last when he is dead, as does knowledge?—knowledge which shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator, since knowledge is the daughter of its creator, and not the stepdaughter, like wealth.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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21c. 1486 AD
So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of God it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted. There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects, though not of disorderly minds. But thou who feedest on dreams dost prefer the sophistry and subterfuges in matters of importance and uncertainty to what is certain and natural, though of lesser magnitude.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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23c. 1486 AD
I am well aware that not being a literary man the presumptuous will think that they have the right to blame me on the ground that I am not a man of letters. Vainglorious people! Know they not that I could make answer as Marius did to the Roman people, and say: They who make a display with the labours of others will not allow me mine? They will say that being unskilled in letters I cannot find true expression for the matters of which I desire to treat; they do not know that in my subjects experience is a truer guide than the words of others, for experience was the teacher of all great writers, and therefore I take her for guide, and I will cite her in all cases.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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24c. 1486 AD
Although I may not be able to quote other authors, as they do, I can quote from a greater and more worthy source, namely, experience,—the teacher of their masters. They go about swelled with pride and pomposity, dressed up and bedight, not with their own labour, but with that of others; and they will not concede me mine. And if they despise me, who am a creator, far more are they, who do not create but trumpet abroad and exploit the works of other men, to be blamed.
Leonardo da Vinci / quote
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