Leonardo DaVinci

The tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness – folks little indebted to Nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts.

The sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work

‘I will go my own way and withdraw apart, the better to study the forms of natural objects,’ I tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter. And so, since one cannot serve two masters, you will badly fill the part of a companion, and carry out your studies of art even worse. And if you say: ‘I will withdraw so far that their words cannot reach me and they cannot disturb me,’ I can tell you that you will be thought mad. But, you see, you will at any rate be alone. And if you must have companionship find it in your studio. This may assist you to have the advantages which arise from various speculations. All other company may be highly mischievous.

And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? To be blind or dumb?

you cannot be a good one if you are not the universal master of representing by your art every kind of form produced by nature

first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of] several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and shoulders

noses are of 10 types: straight, bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline, regular, flat, round or pointed

equal thick in the middle, thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point

means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen.