Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man,and is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person that ever lived...(read more here)

Here are a picks of  some of his many quotes:

Leonardo; A Man of Action

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

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

He who walks straight rarely falls.

Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom.


Leonardo; A Man of Experience

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in

“Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”

“Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”

“The organ of perception acts more readily than judgment.”


Leonardo; A Man of Vision

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

“Average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”

“Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”


Leonardo; The Artist

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.”

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

 “Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.
  
Leonardo; The Man

“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”

“We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”

There will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. But these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. But woe to him who comes between them! For he will end by being cut in pieces.

Could This Be The Most Annoying Fifa World Cup Ever?

I had been looking forward to watching the Fifa World Cup 2010, but so far have only been driven half way to implosion by the constant torturous sound of the hideous Vuvuzelas.

It has become such a distraction from the actual football taking place, that the only real choice is to turn the volume down and miss out on the commentary, but that also diminishes the enjoyment of the match.

These one metre long stadium horns emit a loud monotone sound like a foghorn,and are about as entertaining as a dose of the pox. In fact, they have unanimously been described as "a giant hive full of very angry bees" and been associated with a list of ailments, such as permanent noise-induced hearing loss and spreading colds and flu germs. But still they belt out their incessantly annoying drone.

This is increasingly shaping up to be the most annoying world cup ever, and I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to blot out this far from background interference. There is also little comfort in the fact FIFA, who proclaimed; "We should not try to Europeanise an African World Cup," at least banned vuvuzelas any longer than one metre in length.

Therefore, in the meantime millions of football fans must now endure one and a half hours of nonstop, unvarying, monotonic sound at every single match of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Either that or hit their mute buttons!

Higgins And O'Sullivan: World Snooker Championship Rulers Of The 2000's

Having just watched defending champion John Higgins and then Ronnie O'Sullivan dramatically crash out of the 2010 World Snooker Championship, I couldn't help but thinking that these two snooker giants of the 2000's may fast be approaching the 10 year reign allotted by the snooker gods for any World Champion.

Both aged 34 and born in 1975, Higgins won the World Snooker Championship in 1998, 2007 and 2009 and O'Sullivan 2001, 2004 and 2008 for a total haul of 6 world titles between them.

It would seem to follow a fairly regular pattern of 6 or so victories for whoever is the dominant force in the game that particular decade, with the exception that Higgins and O'Sullivan ended up sharing the spoils, unlike their greedy predecessors.

Despite having a history dating back to 1927, the modern era of the World Snooker Championship began in 1969 when it became a knock-out tournament. Since then, Ray Reardon was the undisputed king of the 70's and the won the competition a total of 6 times in 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1978.

Ray Reardon (born 1932) enjoyed his reign at the more advanced age of 38 to 46, but considering the transformation snooker underwent in the 1970's to take it away from the working men's clubs into becoming a modern sport, this is hardly surprising.

With Steve Davis (born 1957), the age of snooker came down and he enjoyed his stranglehold on the World Snooker Championship in the 1980's, aged 24 to 32, winning the tournament in 1981, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, and 1989.

Alex Hurricane Higgins was the prerequisite exciting, quick player who competed against both Reardon and then Davis during their reigns,and in the process picked up a couple of titles of his own in 1972 and 1982.

Jimmy White (born 1962) then took over Alex Higgins' mantle as the biggest exponent of 'exciting' snooker, but despite appearing in a total of 7 finals between 1984 and 1994, including 1 against Davis and 4 against Stephen Hendry, the title of World Champion eluded him throughout his career.

In the meantime, Stephen Hendry (born 1969) reigned supreme throughout the 90's, and aged 21 to 30 became World Champion on 7 occasions, winning the competition in 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1999.

All of which takes us back to Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins dominance of the 2000's, and their 3 titles a piece; O'Sullivan aged 26 to 33 and Higgins aged 23 to 34. It is probably the genius of O'Sullivan which allowed him to combine an exciting style of play with great ability to bludgeon the opposition, which saw him through to winning so many World titles.

I'm stilling hoping that there is more than a few surprises left in the dynamic duo of the 2000's, but in the meantime I can't help but looking ahead to what the 2010's may hold.

Considering the assortment of players currently on the snooker circuit, Mark Selby (born 1983) and Neil Robertson (born 1983) would seem to be the ones fast gaining a reputation as solid and dangerous opponents. 

Although Selby and Robertson may find themselves being cast in the mould of the solid, yet entertaining modern player, it is unlikely they will be that type of player who will create the same interest in the game that has been created by the likes of Alex Higgins, Jimmy White or Ronnie O'Sullivan.

Professor Moriarty the Criminal Genius

Professor James Moriarty was a criminal mastermind and the arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. In the nineteenth century up to his death at the Reichenbach Falls on the 4th May 1891, Moriarty was the head of London's underworld with a vast and subtle criminal network extending into Europe. As Holmes describes at the time:

"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them."

Moriarty makes two appearances in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective stories; "The Final Problem" and "The Valley of Fear". However, he is mentioned in five of his other stories, including The Empty House, The Norwood Builder, The Missing Three-Quarter, The Illustrious Client, and His Last Bow. Moriarty is described as a man of good background and education, with phenomenal mathematical abilities which won him a seat at a university aged just twenty-one. Sherlock Holmes gives us a glimpse into Professor Moriarty's nature during those years when he commented:

"But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London..."

Moriarty's attempts to eliminate his enemies would often involve arranging "accidents" such as falling masonry or a speeding horse drawn carriage. He would also sometimes take care of business personally using a silenced rifle cane to snipe targets with relative anonymity.

Real life inspirations for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's criminal genius are believed to include the master criminal Adam Worth, and also the Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb, who would ruthlessly seek to destroy the careers and reputations of his rival scientists.

C. Auguste Dupin : The First Great Detective

In her autobiography Christie admits that with Poirot "I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp.

For his part Conan Doyle acknowledged basing Sherlock Holmes on the model of Edgar Allan Poe's fictional French detective C. Auguste Dupin, who in his use of "ratiocination" prefigures Poirot's reliance on his "little grey cells".

C. Auguste Dupin is a fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), widely considered the first detective fiction story. He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word detective had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin.

Interesting Facts

Doyle once said, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"

In the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet" (1887), Doctor Watson compares Holmes to Dupin, to which Holmes replies, "No doubt you think you are complimenting me ... In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow," despite the fact that the detective was evidently inspired by the other.

The Origins Of Religion

"One of the most important realizations that any spiritual seeker can come to is that there are many valid ways to seek to explain the universal truth of God."

There would certainly be less destruction in the world if people of different beliefs spent at least some of their time trying to establish connections with one another instead of focusing on their differences. An integral aspect of religion is surely spirituality, love and understanding not fear, hate and ignorance.

By allowing some knowledge and analysis of other people's faiths it then becomes possible to see connections with your own, which might in turn help to unite people from around the world. The Christian Bible and the Muslim Koran, for instance, includes stories and characters from the Hebrew Old Testament, which in turn has its roots in the ancient religions of Egypt, Babylon, Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and so on in a long, rich bloodline.

As you travel further back into man's distant past, you would see the elemental forces of nature, such as storms, thunder, lightening and rain, being worshipped by people who lived close to the land and relied on the natural world to provide everything they needed for survival and pleasure.

The Sun, Moon and stars have always had a powerful hold on the collective human imagination and occupied a major place in most early religions. The Sun was a god who brought energy, light, warmth and made the crops grow each year, while the Moon brought light to the dark night and was spiritual and mysterious. To the Inca people gold was the sweat of the Sun and silver the tears of the Moon.

Today, most of the stars and constellations we see in the night sky still carry the name of the various mythological gods and goddesses who existed in man's distant and shared past.

Astronomy And Religion

While searching the internet the other day, I was interested to come upon an article called 'History Of Astronomy' which appeared on an easy to follow website at Astronomy Trek.com.

In the article it was interesting to learn about mankind's struggle for a deeper understanding of the nature of the Universe and how, despite Aristrachus of Samos proposing a heliocentric model of the Sun and planets in 280 B.C., the idea that all objects in the heavens revolved around the Earth was generally accepted until the later part of the 17th century A.D.

At the heart of the misunderstanding seemed to be religion's conceit that man, as God's crowning glory, should occupy a place at the centre of creation. Aristotle was at the forefront of Western science until the 1500's and his belief that the Earth was stuck and imperfect, while the heavens were perfect and free to move around in space also became a doctrine of the Catholic Church until evidence to the contrary was produced by such renaissance giants as Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Galileo.

Even then religion wasn't ready to give up its claim to hold all the answers and, as mentioned in the article, in 1632, "Galileo was tried by the church for heresy, forced to recant his theories and was condemned to spend the rest of his life under house arrest."

Eventually there was no holding back the tide of progress and with the church's waning power, having been helpless to prevent the devestating plagues which ravaged Europe, people started placing more faith in medecine, science and the clever inventions which began to appear.

Galileo's refracting telescope and Newton's reflector (seen above)  also helped usher in a new Age of physics and Enlightenment. It was quite interesting to note, however, that it wasn't until 1922 that Galileo was finally absolved by the Vatican for his views. Better late than never I suppose.