Quotes · Skopia

66 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Tuscany✕clear

O you who hear within these scattered verses The sound of sighs with which I fed my heart In my first errant youthful days when I In part was not the man I am today.

1352

★ 1.1

Painting and sculpture, hard work and fair dealing have been my ruin and things go continually from bad to worse. It would have been better had I been put to making matches in my youth than to be in such a fret!

1542

★ 1.3

Personal journal

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

Leonardo da Vinci

1519

★ 1.3

Personal journal

This benign nature so provides that over all the world you find something to imitate.

Leonardo da Vinci

1519

★ 1.3

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least.

Leonardo da Vinci

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects · 1568

★ 1.3

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Whoever is responsible for another's becoming powerful ruins himself.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1513

★ 1.4

Personal journal

Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting.

Leonardo da Vinci

1519

★ 1.4

Today I climbed the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosus (Windy). The only motive for my ascent was the wish to see what so great a height had to offer.

1336

★ 1.9

How beautiful is youth, that is always slipping away! Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so: of tomorrow there's no knowing.

Lorenzo de Medici

1490

★ 1.9

In disputes about natural phenomena one must begin not with the authority of Scriptural passage but with sensory experience and necessary demonstrations. For the Holy Scripture and nature derive equally from the Godhead, the former as the dictation of the Holy Spirit and the latter as the most obedient executrix of God's orders.

Galileo Galilei

1615

★ 1.9

In this extremity of our city's suffering and tribulation the revered authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick, or so hard pressed for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.

Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron · 1353

★ 2.0

Personal journal

Man and animal are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.

Leonardo da Vinci

1508

★ 2.1

Political literature · Philosophical literature

The cause of the bad and of the good fortune of men is the way in which their method of working fits the times.

Niccolo Machiavelli

1531

★ 2.1

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1513

★ 2.2

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.

Dante Alighieri

Purgatorio · 1321

★ 2.3

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 2.3

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious haven.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 2.4

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass on.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 2.4

If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

1525

★ 3.0

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 3.0

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live; that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin that his preservation.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 3.0

The contours of its legs are extremely beautiful, along with the splendid articulations and grace of its flanks, a sweeter and more graceful pose has never been seen that could equal it, nor have feet, hands, and a head ever been produced which so well match all the other parts of the body in skill of workmanship or design. To be sure, anyone who sees the statue need not be concerned with seeing any other piece of sculpture done in our times or in any other period by any other artist.

The Lives of the Artist · 1550

★ 3.5

We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them, others when they hear them or fail to hear them. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever.

1360

★ 3.6

Those new regions which we found and explored with the fleet... We may rightly call a New World... A continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals other than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.

Amerigo Vespucci

1503

★ 3.6

They dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed in a ship.

Giovanni Boccaccio

1353

★ 3.7

Political literature · Philosophical literature

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

Niccolo Machiavelli

1531

★ 3.7

Historical literature

There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death.

Agnolo di Tura del Grosso

★ 3.7

Love and the gracious heart are a single thing… One can no more be without the other Than the reasoning mind without its reason.

Dante Alighieri

La Vita Nuova · 1294

★ 3.8

Love hath so long possessed me for his own And made his lordship so familiar.

Dante Alighieri

La Vita Nuova · 1294

★ 3.8

Personal journal

Human subtlety... Will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Leonardo da Vinci

1519

★ 3.8

The marble not yet carved can hold the form Of every thought the greatest artist has.

1564

★ 3.8

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

The greatest gift which God in His bounty Bestowed in creating, And the most conformed to His own goodness And that which He most prizes, was the freedom of the will, With which the creatures that have intelligence, They all and they alone, were and are endowed.

Dante Alighieri

Paradiso · 1321

★ 3.9

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlpool.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 3.9

Personal journal

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

1519

★ 3.9

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

This leads to a debate: is it better to be loved than feared, or the reverse? The answer is that it is desirable to be both, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fail in one of the two.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 3.9

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

With the color that paints the morning and evening clouds that face the sun I saw then the whole heaven suffused.

Dante Alighieri

Paradiso · 1321

★ 4.0

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

Here one must leave behind all hesitation; here every cowardice must meet its death.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 4.0

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

O human race, born to fly upward, Wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

Dante Alighieri

Purgatorio · 1321

★ 4.0

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

The reputation which the world bestows is like the wind, that shifts now here now there, its name changed with the quarter whence it blows.

Dante Alighieri

Purgatorio · 1321

★ 4.0

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

I saw within Its depth how It conceives all things in a single volume bound by Love, of which the universe is the scattered leaves.

Dante Alighieri

Paradiso · 1321

★ 4.0

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