Most people, if you give them a book, they sniff around on it awhile, then try to eat it. - Leonardo da Vinci

"Uno non può possedere capacità più grande o più piccola della padronanza di se stesso."
(One can have no greater or lesser mastery than of oneself.)

Fire may be represented as the destroyer of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences [or subtle things].

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.