Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded as a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works contributed to the development of European art to an extent rivalled only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.

Quotes

Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return.

Miscellaneous
A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

Sleep
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

Education
The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.

Miscellaneous
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Art
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Miscellaneous, Praise, Understanding
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Life & Death
As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Intelligence